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The Kid Should See This

Making a Wooden Chess Set With Gear Hinges

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Jeremy Fielding‘s mechanical engineering skills makes creating an oversized wooden chess and checker set looks easy. He designs and builds a unique folding board with handmade gear hinges in this 2016 ‘how it was made’ video.

Although it is quite large, it is designed to be carried around, and will stay closed without a locking mechanism. Each square is 2.5″ x 2.5″ (6.5cm square), and the overall board is about 22″ (55cm) square.

In the future, I plan to make a wooden carrying case, or maybe a removable handle.

All the steps are shown to make this board, but my main goal was to share the concept. My hope is that most people would modify it to make a completely unique chessboard.

assembling the gears
gear hinge chessboard
Follow these gear hinges with more videos about gears:
• Gears of all shapes
• How a car’s differential gear works
Arthur Ganson’s wire gears
Turing Tumble, a DIY mechanical computer powered by marbles

Bonus: More workshops.

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