Certabo Pieces
One of the good things about the Certabo boards is that you can use your own pieces by just attaching the supplied RFID chips to their bases. I have now done this for two sets: a 40 year old cheap plastic set that I had available when I first received my board and an expensive boxwood/ebony set I ordered from House of Staunton in December 2020.
Unfortunately the House of Staunton pieces were faulty, but I only realised how badly after I'd started attaching the chips and felt. The first step in converting pieces for the Certabo is to remove the existing cloth on the base. When doing this for the HoS set I noticed that some of the varnish was coming off the boxwood pieces. I wasn't using any solvents - just holding the pieces in my hand. I think the coating was a water based varnish that had been diluted but not mixed properly, so some areas of a piece had quite a good finish while other areas had hardly any and rubbed off easily. Of course, holding them for this job just accelerated the handling they would have got over time, so sooner or later I would have had the same problem. I got no help from HoS, not even an acknowledgement that the pieces were faulty, although they did ask for my phone number so they could call me (they didn't). Of course, there was no offer of a replacement or refund either. Considering these were supposed to be their "luxury" pieces I was extremly disappointed.
Update, February 2024: House of Staunton were made aware of my issue and I received several messages from their owner/CEO apologising for the problem with the pieces and also for the service I received. Although there wasn't anything he could do to rectify it, it was good that he acknowledged it wasn't acceptable. Apparently they have implemented a new customer management system to ensure that any future issues are dealt with better.
So below are the steps I took to complete both sets, including how I re-varnished the HoS boxwood pieces. The following photos show the final results:
Attaching the chips
Remove the existing cloth
Removing the old cloth was the easiest part. On the plastic pieces I needed to carefully separate it from the base at one edge with a knife. Most of the cloth then pulled off in one piece but in some cases it tore as the cloth was very old.
For the HoS pieces I could separate the cloth using just a fingernail and it pulled off easily in one piece.
Clean the bases
On the plastic pieces the old glue was quite hard so I needed to scrape it with a knife and sand it off with some sandpaper. Since the pieces were quite hard plastic I didn't need to be too careful though.
Cleaning the HoS pieces needed more care. Fortunately the glue was water soluble so I didn't need to use any tools, but I still needed to be careful as I didn't want to wash off any more varnish. At that time I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with the faulty varnish problem. Also, I didn't want to get the pieces too wet as even boxwood can crack if it expands and shrinks too much with moisture. So I used a damp sponge to carefully rub off the glue from the base without rubbing or wetting the rest of the piece.
Attach the chips
The plastic pieces aren't weighted (the king weighs 30g) so I just attached the 20mm chips to the centre of each piece.
The HoS pieces are quite heavy, with the king weighing 80g and having a large metal weight in the base. I knew this could cause problems so I started by making a version of my Certabo driver that would log any read errors. Sure enough just taping the 25mm chips to the bases led to lots of errors, with the larger pieces sometimes failing to read completely. I found that for the pawns and minor pieces a couple of cardboard discs between the base and the chip solved this but on the major pieces even that didn't work. Then I found a far better solution is to use PVC electricians tape. This is a roll of adhesive tape like Scotch tape or Sellotape but designed for use by electricians and can be bought in most hardware stores. I covered the metal weights with five layers of tape and then attached the chips to that. You just need to make sure the tape forms a flat base or else the piece might lean over. Maybe one day I will replace the cardboard in the other pieces but I had already attached the felt before I found the improved solution.
Attach new felt
I bought some felt from The Felt Factory: Ecru and Black for the plastic pieces, and Light Camel and Chocolate for the HoS set.
The basic method of attaching the felt is to use Tacky Craft Glue (I was told that normal PVA glue is too runny for felt) to stick a patch of felt to the base and then, once the glue has dried, to use sharp scissors to trim around the base. For the pieces where a hole for the chip is required I used the plastic holder that the chips came in as a stencil for marking the required hole on the felt and then cut it out using scissors. I found it wasn't possible to cut a smooth, neat hole in the felt using just a knife.
For the plastic pieces one layer of felt was all that was required. The felt is slightly thicker than the chip so forms a nice supporting ring around the base of the piece.
On the HoS pieces though the extra spacers required meant that I needed to use two layers of felt instead.
Waxing the ebony pieces
In researching what to do with the boxwood pieces I discovered that ebony pieces are prone to cracking and that wax is recommended. In particular the Liberon Black Bison Paste seems well regarded. I bought some just to protect the pieces but was surprised how much better it made them look. It made me wonder why they didn't come waxed already.
It's easy to apply using a small piece of old cotton T-shirt. Then leave it to dry for about 20 minutes and after that give it a short gentle wiping with a clean piece of T-shirt to make it really shine. They say it's important that you don't leave it to dry too long (e.g. more than 30 minutes). I suppose after that it will form a hard, ugly layer that can't be polished. It will continue to give off a smell for about a day while it fully dries.
I'm sure waxing the boxwood pieces would improve them too but I won't be doing that. At the moment, if I scratch them I can just sand them off and apply a new coat of varnish, but if I have waxed them it becomes far more complicated as the wax would need to be removed first. You can't apply a varnish over wax.
Varnishing chess pieces
Don't do this part unless you are really keen as it took hours of work spread over many days!
Remove the remaining varnish
It's risky applying a varnish over an old coating as the new one might not stick, especially if they are different types. So it is safest to remove the old varnish first. Of course, for me this was made easier by the old varnish being such poor quality that I could wash off some of the remaining varnish with water. I was still careful doing this though to avoid getting the pieces too wet as I didn't want the water soaking into the wood. Also using too much water would have caused the fibres in the wood to start lifting. So I finished off the removal using 400 grade sandpaper and wiped off the dust with a damp cloth. I first tried 240 grade but could see it was too rough as it was leaving small scratch marks.
Apply new varnish
I knew I couldn't brush on varnish well enough to leave a smooth coat and discovered there is a wipe-on version that helps avoid leaving brush marks. I chose the satin finish of an oil based wipe-on polyurethane varnish although I'm sure there are people that would say it was wrong for boxwood pieces as it makes them a bit darker and yellower in colour. My reasons were:
- Minwax make a water based wipe-on varnish but I couldn't find a supplier here.
- I could use normal water based varnish and dilute it for use as wipe-on but I wasn't confident about getting the amount of dilution required correct.
- Having worried about using water for cleaning the pieces I was concerned about adding even more for the same reasons: fibres lifting and pieces cracking.
- Oil based is supposed to be easier to apply as it takes longer to dry, which was important for me as I hadn't done this before and I'd only get one chance!
- I like the look of oil based varnishes as they show the grain of the wood more than water based.
- Since the black pieces are ebony it didn't matter too much that the white pieces became slightly darker as there was still plenty of contrast.
- I'm hoping that oiling the wood will make it less likely to crack in the future, but I have no idea if that is true.
I used a small piece of old cotton T-shirt to apply a thin layer of varnish and then left it for a day to dry. Then I sanded it down using the 400 grade sandpaper and again wiped off any dust with a damp cloth. Having let any dampness dry again I applied the next coat. Looking back, I think I would have done better to use 800 or 1200 grade for this step as the 400 grade removed a bit too much of the thin layer, meaning I ended up applying about 5 or 6 coats. I might also have done better to use sanding sealer first but I only found out about that product later! For the last coat I used some paper from a thick brown bag to rub down the piece as this smoothed it off without really sanding it.
A very important safety tip: never put rags that are still wet with varnish or oil in your rubbish as they can ignite on their own. Many workshop and kitchen fires are caused by this. Hang them up to dry somewhere first!