I didn't take a lot of photos of this project. So I'll just type through it a bit. I received the chess top from my daughter with the thought of making a table for it. The top was in really bad shape. It was delaminating, cupping and some of the primary measurements were just off from the get go. It was about 25" wide so I had no way to easily sand this thing down so I did what I could with hand tools. I reinforced the bottom, recut the top for square and to give the edge banding some continuity. It's not perfect but much better and should hold up for years.
I added two drawers to the basic cabinet that are opposite each other and lined them with felt to store the chess pieces in. I put a nice dovetail in there for strength and appearance. The dark wood is black walnut and the light wood is soft maple. I felt this worked with the checkboard surface well. I love me some black walnut.
When playing chess you need someplace to put the captured pieces so I put a removable shelf near the bottom of the cabinet. Here is the nearly completed cabinet -- just needs a few more coats of finish.
You can see the biggest issue with the top in the picture here -- there is a chip in the inside edge of the outer banding. I decided to fill it with epoxy, like you would use on a live edge table top, and leave the imperfection there. Kind of tells a story. Plus I ran out of maple to replace the side -- but I digress....