From the Wood Lathe to the Carved Knight: How Chess Pieces Are Made

Woodturning

A technique in which a piece of wood is spun on itself, on a machine called a lathe, while a cutting tool gives it a symmetrical profile. All chess pieces with a round cross-section are turned.

Carved wooden set

A set in which some of the pieces, at the very least the knights, are shaped with a tool or machine away from the lathe: horse’s head, mane, crenellations, the slit of the bishop’s mitre.

The steps in making a carved wooden chess set

1. Choosing and seasoning the wood. Boxwood, ebony, rosewood or sheesham are cut and then seasoned slowly, sometimes for years in the case of the densest woods. A wood that is not dry enough splits or warps after turning.
2. Cutting into squares. The wood is cut into bars of square section, slightly wider than the base of the largest piece. Splits, knots and defects are removed at this stage.
3. Roughing out. On the lathe, the square becomes a cylinder. For serial production, this step and the next can be done on an automatic or copying lathe.
4. Turning the profile. The turner cuts the coves, forms the beads, collars and crowns, following a template so that the eight pawns and the pairs of pieces are identical. Boxwood, with its very fine grain, allows the crispest profiles.
5. Carving. The bishop’s mitre is slit, the rook’s crenellations are cut, the king’s cross is shaped. For the knight, see below.
6. Sanding. Several passes with ever finer abrasives remove the tool marks.
7. Ebonising or staining the black pieces if the wood is not naturally dark (see ebonised boxwood).
8. Finishing. Varnish, lacquer, oil or wax protect the wood and set its look, from matt to satin. The FIDE standards call for pieces that are not excessively shiny.
9. Weighting. The base is drilled and a weight of lead, zinc or steel is fitted into it (see weighting).
10. Felting and checking. The felt is glued on, then the heights, the plumb, the colour and the matching of the two sides are checked.

The knight, the key piece

The knight is the only piece in the Staunton pattern that is not symmetrical about an axis: its horse’s head cannot come off a lathe. There are three ways of making it:

• The added head: the base is turned like the other pieces, the head is carved separately from a block of wood, then glued and often dowelled. This is the most widespread method on carefully made sets.
• The one-piece knight: base and head are shaped from the same piece of wood, which calls for a particular machine or skill. In France, the firm of Chavet says it has a machine that makes knights in a single piece in this way.
• The machined head: on recent productions, a CNC milling machine can rough out the head, which is then taken up again with a tool for the details.

In every case the difficulty is twofold: giving the head character (the eye, the nostrils, the mane) and producing two knights per side that resemble each other. Collector’s sets are often distinguished by knights with finely carved manes, lock by lock.

Why is the knight the most expensive piece?

Because it concentrates the greatest share of the work. A rook or a pawn is turned in a few minutes; a carved knight can take far longer, with a higher risk of breakage (an ear that splits, a grain line badly oriented). The block of wood needed is also larger. That is why the price of a set often follows the quality of its knights.

A European tradition of turning

In France, the making of boxwood chess pieces is historically tied to the High Jura: around Saint-Claude, turners had for centuries been shaping devotional objects for pilgrims, before diversifying, notably into chess sets. In the twentieth century, Dortan, in the Ain, became one of the great French centres of piece manufacture, with the houses of Lardy and Chavet. This history is told on our page Saint-Claude, the Jura and Chavet.

In the Alps and in Central Europe, another tradition produced sets with fully carved characters, far from the Staunton pattern. Le Palais des Échecs thus presents carved wooden chess sets from the Alps, in which each piece becomes a small figure.

The woods and their demands

Each wood imposes its own rules on the turner. Boxwood and ebony, very hard, demand perfectly sharpened tools but give details of great crispness. Rosewood, oily, polishes very well but glues poorly. Soft woods turn quickly but “fuzz” when sanded. Our comparison of woods gives the density and hardness of each. Once the set is finished, how it is looked after determines how long it lasts: see caring for a wooden chess set.

Hand lathe, copying lathe, CNC

Three ways of turning coexist. The hand lathe, where the turner guides the tool himself following a template, allows the finest profiles but demands great consistency to produce sixteen identical pieces. The copying lathe mechanically reproduces a reference pattern: it guarantees similar pieces and speeds up production, with the finishing still taken up with a tool. CNC machines, finally, chain turning and machining from a file; they are used chiefly for large runs and for roughing out knight heads.

The method does not say everything about quality: a well-set copying lathe on dry boxwood gives better pieces than a hand lathe on badly seasoned wood. It is the choice of wood, the care taken over the finish and the quality of the knights that make the difference.

The final check

Before being packed, a carefully made set goes through a series of checks: the height of each piece against its pattern, the plumb (the piece must stand upright on a flat surface), the symmetry of the two knights of a side, the evenness of the stain on the black pieces, the absence of splits or knots, the gluing of the felt. The FIDE standards add a simple test that anyone can repeat: a piece tilted by about 30° must return to its base without falling over.

Sources: FIDE equipment standards (2026); Jura Tourisme (history of High Jura turning); presentation of the Chavet company by its retailers.