For one of my family christmas things, everyone drew another's name, and you had to give a gift that was hand-made, second-hand, or something. I made a chess board. I saw something a year or so ago that was pretty neat, and gave me the idea of making one. I wanted to make one that folded into a box for the pieces, so I had to improvise. I decided to make the box with a depression in the actual board area for the tiles to sit on.

The box was made with one-inch red oak. The tiles (cut from quarter-inch slats) are red oak (stained darker) for the black squares, and poplar for the white squares. As you can see, the tiles didn't fit well at first. I made this block to hold the pieces in place, and ran them all through a table saw on three sides. After this, the tiles fit just right.

The tiles were glued on to make a complete board, and hinges and a latch were added to make it a box. A coat of polyurethane was added, and finally some nice-looking velvet lined the inside so the pieces don't rattle around too much.

Here are a couple shots: full board; white to move. Keep in mind that the idea for this gift was for it to be home-made. So naturally there are a lot of cosmetic flaws with the finished chess board, lest it be thought store-bought.