The theme for this year’s half scale swap through the Half Scale Minis Group was Antiques, and my contribution was a checker board with checkers in a cigar box. As usual, I put these together over the holidays and took pictures then, but I didn’t write anything down, so let’s see how much I can remember…

Checkerboards have 64 2-inch squares. I bought 1/16″ x 1/16″ strips of basswood and mahogany from Balsa Wood Shop, which makes my squares 1.5″ in 1:24 scale. The next size up would have been 3/32″ strip wood, for the equivalent of 2.25″ squares… which probably would have been fine? I’m not sure now why I decided on 1/16″ x 1/16″. The math seemed to work out at the time.

Anywho, I started by cutting up the 24″ pieces of strip wood into 4″ lengths. (I needed to make 22 checkerboards for the swap. If you’re just making one or a few, you could cut smaller lengths.) I glued these together, alternating light and dark, with eight lengths per piece and eight pieces altogether.

I glued the eight pieces together to form a cane, again with the squares alternating between light and dark.

Here’s how it looks on the end. Although they were supposed to be 1/16″ x 1/16″, some strips weren’t a uniform width, so some of the squares don’t quite match up where they should.

The checkerboard cane is 1/2″ square and my cheap Harbor Freight table saw wouldn’t cut all the way through it, so I splurged on a Proxxon Mini Chop Miter Saw from Micro-Mark with a Black Friday coupon.

This saw can cut through 1″ of material and it has an adjustable stop, which made it easy for me to cut multiple checkerboards of the same depth.

I cut the cane into 1/16″ slices. I like the saw a lot, but the small, cut-off pieces do have a tendency to go flying. I’m not sure how well it will work for small pieces of trim.

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