Chess Set

My focus during the ideation phase was to determine which materials I would use. I originally planned to incorporate wood and epoxy resin. However, I began to brainstorm ways to include metal. My final design is to the left, the plan being to use a low-melting-point metal & epoxy resin.

SKETCHES

The bodies were made through trial and error on the lathe until I had spun flawless pieces.

As for the toppers, I quickly realized that 3D shapes would be too complicated to create, so I pivoted to laser-cut basswood.

This project introduced me to epoxy and its properties, and I did a lot of exploration with mica powder, dye, and mold shapes. I focused on purples and black to fit my space-themed design.

As for the metal, I did a quick test with soldering wire because it was the lowest-melting-point metal I had at the time. All I needed to see was that the solder could take the shape of the mold after melting and hardening, and that’s exactly what I got. Eventually, I moved on from solder after further research on attainable metals.

Mold-making was not the smoothest process, but in the end, I had a working two-piece mold made of heat-resistant rubber. That would be critical to the next step because I chose bismuth as my casting metal.

When casting the toppers, I tried several different molds and techniques to create the cleanest casts possible. The most successful casts turned out to be the ones I poured directly into the laser-cut wood. After the epoxy dried, I ran the wood under hot water to weaken it and remove the casts.

The bodies were much simpler, and all came out perfectly after one pour.

Casting metal was unfamiliar territory for me, but after a couple of test casts, I was confident that the rest would come out great.

My rubber molds held up very well, and after casting every piece, I was left with just one burn from the molten metal!

The final steps included drilling holes at both ends of the body pieces and assembling them. My goal was for the components to fit together and maintain the overall form before using glue. The slots in the metal head pieces held the toppers, and the rods on the bases and heads attached to the bodies.