The Chess Board

Seeing I have more free time this summer, I have been working on a few hobbies to pass the time between triathlons and searching for a new job. One hobby in particular is woodworking and I decided to try to make something that could be a family heirloom someday. My father loves chess and purchased a chess set while in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. The pieces are about three inches tall and were hand carved from different hardwoods. He never purchased the table that went with the set because it was to big to carry back to the ship.

My woodworking experience is from making a few bookshelves, our entertainment center, a toybox for Luke and a couple other inexpensive projects. I decided that this was to be the one I would take the most pride in and so I decided to use only the best materials and joinery that I could think of.

I started making the table base with red oak. I purchased pre shaped legs and cut mortise joints into each leg as well as matching tenons on the aprons. I used a router and a chisel for the mortise joints and a table saw for the tenons. The tenons slide into the mortise with a lot of glue and create a very sturdy corner. I also used the table saw to cut a slot in the apron boards to hold the bottom of the table (like a basket).

For the chess board, I used a beautiful curling maple for the lights squares and walnut for the dark squares. I cut 3 inch squares in both materials and then glued them into the checker board pattern. I sanded the top flat and then used the router to cut a small rabbet around the perimeter.

The outer border for the board was again red oak. I mitered the corners and then cut a slot in each corner. I inserted a 1/8" thick piece of walnut into the slots to increase the strength of the joint. I then shaped the otside edge with a roman ogee bit on the router.

Finally I coated the oak partions of the table and board with a single coat of satin polyeurathane and the walnut and maple portions with three coats of high gloss polyeurathane to give it a glass like apearance. I also lined the inside of the box with red velvet to protect the chess pieces.

Alaska! (July 11th-15th, 2009)

Earlier this week my dad and I fulfilled a promise I made for putting me through college. Being unemployed made it a bit more difficult, but I had booked the trip months ago while still employed. The best part of it was that I never told my dad where we were going. He knew we were going fishing at a lodge but he didn't learn where we were going till we got to the airport and and he checked in. Alaska?! He was so excited. Better yet, we were upgraded to first class both ways which made it a once in a life time event for him.

We arrived on the Kenai Peninsula which is south of Anchorage by three hours. We were based out of Soldatna which is located on the banks of the Kenai river, home to the largest salmon in the world. We would be fishing three days while in Alaska. We stayed at the Silver Budda Lodge which was a ways out of town and enjoyed the european hospitality of the Swiss owners.

Our first day of fishing was for Halibut out of Homer. We joined 9 other guests on the "Northern Lights" with Captain Mark and his deck hand Allison. We journeyed out by the Barren Islands where we fished for about six hours. There we caught 18 halibut with the largest (62 lbs) being caught by a 7 year old boy. For Bait, we used a fist full of Octopus on a huge circle hook. Check out this picture of the bait.

Here is a video of my dad landing a halibut the same time as another guest (both fish are about 35 to 40 lbs).

Halibut have both eyes on the same side of their head and it takes a while to get used to this. What do you think?

While on this trip, we got to play with a pod of porpoises. They swam beneath the boat and would dart out in front of the bow before surfacing, and then dive back down. I was lucky to catch this on video as well.

Here is a photo of our daily catch. If you are looking for a halibut charter out of Homer, I would highly recommend Captain Mark. His website is http://www.aurorasportfishing.net/

On day two we fished on the Kasilof (Kiss-ee-lof) River. The Kasilof was a beautiful river that we fished out of a drift boat with Captain Robert Johnson. He had nice equipment and he seemed very experienced as a fishing guide. He was not a great people person though and both my father and I didn't enjoy the time on the river with him. The whole time he was very pessimistic about catching fish, even though we saw fish being caught all around us during the day. We did catch 5 Dolly Varden (Bull trout or an Artic Char depending on where you are fishing) but the river was closed to that fish and so we needed to throw them back. Here is a photo of the river.

Our last day we fished the Kenai River (the big dance!). This river was so hyped up and we were very excited about the chance to catch a monster fish. We saw numerous fish over 40lbs caught on this day. We enjoyed the company of our Guide, Bob Estes from Moby King Charters. Bob was a much better guide than we had the day before. His wife even made us cookies. We were in a power boat for this trip and were able to zip up and down the river to the best spots. When we got on the river we noticed that the were not to be fishing the river alone this day. There were at least a couple hundred boats trying to land their monster fish as well. The DNR says that about 1000 fish enter the river each day from the ocean. That would put your odds of catching a king low. If anyone in your boat catches a fish you need to consider that a great day of fishing. We fished all day and towards the end I finally hooked a salmon! Bad news though, the old guy next to me in the boat wrapped his line around mine and I lost my fish. So after to days of salmon fishing, neither my dad or I caught a fish.

We don't give up that easy. After returning to the lodge we strapped on waders and headed to the river to fish from the bank. We didn't know what we were doing, but we both hooked salmon from the shore. We lost both fish as well, but we had as much fun doing that as fishing with the guides. My dad did hook a Seagull which was diving for his hook. This is the lodge owner cutting the line to release the bird.

We woke up early the next day to return to the Anchorage airport. At 2:30 I was able to see the sun on the horizon, but it was the northern horizon! The sun was up around 4 am and would set each night around midnight. How fun! Next time I go fishing in Alaska, I will plan a whole week and will spend the majority of the time fishing from the bank for Red Salmon. They don't get as big, but a good day has between 20,000 and 30,000 salmon entering the river (compared to 1,000 Kings).