Folding, Flat, Magnetic Chess

This chess set is flat, with magnetic circular pieces, and can be folded to pause a game or to transport the set.

This chess set was created due to the lack of good portable chess sets available online.

Almost all available chess sets online with flat pieces (known as wallet chess/pocket chess/checkbook chess) either do not have a place to store captured pieces, or store captured pieces in a weird, non-symmetrical way where all the captured pieces are in front of one of the players.

This chess set addresses these issues and also adds a zipper, a fabric checkerboard, and a leather exterior to create an elegant, but simple, portable magnetic chess set that is fun to use.

The whole set is magnetic, so captured pieces can be placed anywhere surrounding the playing area. The design allows for 16 pieces to fit on both sides comfortably.

What you need:

1. Two types of fabric for making the checkerboard

2. Fabric to add around the checkerboard

3. Circular magnets (smaller than 1" diameter)

4. Two sheets of sheet metal around 9"x6" (steel or other magnetic material)

5. Fabric/leather to put on outside of chess set

6. Epoxy/resin to cover chess pieces

7. Laminator and laminating plastic

8. Thread and sewing machine

9. Clear glue

10. zipper (~22")

11. Heatnbond lite (sewable)

The sheet metal forms the foundation and magnetic element of the chess set.

When I bought my sheet metal, it was 12" x 9", so I had to cut it into two 6" x 9" pieces.

To secure the pieces of sheet metal an additional material should be used. For this set, I used leather.

Leather is expensive (and faux leather too), so I up-cycled an old purse.

Ideally the perfect piece of leather would be the exact size as the desired size of your chess set.

For me, my leather was too small so I sewed 3 pieces of leather together.

It is important for the 'cover' of the chess set to be very flat so the checkerboard can lay flat while playing.

Thus when sewing multiple pieces of leather together, I used an additional thin piece of fabric as a support material (see pic).

Glue the sheet metal pieces to the leather (or other cover material).

The shape is important as you will cut off the extra leather later and the shape you make here defines the shape of the chess set.

Use a fabric/metal glue that preferably dries flexible and clear.

IMPORTANT!! -- Leave a small gap between the two pieces of metal to allow your chess set to fold easily.

To make the checkerboard pattern we will weave two different fabrics together.

I used a canvas fabric for the white squares, and a purple fabric for the dark squares.

Because the checkerboard is made by weaving, it is important to cut the dimensions of the fabric very precisely.

The material that is being pulled through is called the weft, and the base material is called the warp.

Because the checkerboard is 8x8, and my magnets were ~1" in diameter, I made each square of the board 1".

Thus I cut 8 pieces of weft at 1" x 9" (9" so there is some extra to cut later).

My warp was 8" x 10".

To make it easy to weave the warp, I folded the warp in half (8" x 5"), and drew a line with a sharpie 1" from the far side (opposite the fold). This line represents where I want to stop cutting. Then I draw 7 lines, 1" apart perpendicular to the stop-line. These lines are where cuts will be made.

Using a paperclip to hold the fold together is helpful.

Pull each piece of weft through the warp and make a checkerboard pattern.

Add heatnbond lite to the checkerboard pattern to glue everything in place and prepare the checkerboard for mounting onto the sheet metal.

After you apply heatnbond lite to the back of the pattern, you can trim away all the excess fabric.

Also at this point you can cut the checkerboard in half so you can place one half of the pattern on the left side of the board, and one half of the pattern on the right side of the board.

Now that the checkerboard is ready and has the heatnbond applied, I chose to outline each square in thread to define squares clearly and allow for easy 'sliding' of pieces on the board.

If you don't sew down the squares, a sliding piece can 'catch' on a square which may damage the board over time.

Next we glue the checkerboard pattern to the metal to secure our checkerboard onto the chess set. This is done by just ironing the heatnbond-covered checkerboard to the metal.

To cover the rest of the metal, I used more heatnbond and some black fabric.

Cut the fabric to size, and attach heatnbond to one side.

Glue the fabric onto the metal and completely cover the metal surfaces

Also here you can add a zipper (optional).

Sew a zipper around the perimeter of the board using the excess of leather/cover to sew into.

After this step, you can trim the excess leather to size.

Print out the chess pieces on computer paper. (Use this link to download the chess pieces design to customize it or reuse it: (https://arielslepyan.me/files/chess_pieces.pptx).

Laminate the pieces using a laminating machine.

Cut the pieces out of the lamination and stick to the back of the magnets.

Use epoxy/resin (optional) to coat the pieces to give them a shiny finish and a good feel.

(optional) Attach a name on the cover with more heatnbond!

I used the same canvas material as the weft on the board, and used a wood burner to write the word chess as well as my initials and my sister's (Danielle Slepyan who helped a bunch with this project!).

Put the pieces on the board and play your chess game!