)I made a chess set, board, and box for everything out of a 2x4 Western Maple 2x4; our Woodcrafters guild allows any local species, softwood or hardwood.
I started with a rough sawn 8' (96") piece, planed the bare minimum off to get clean faces, then cut the last 6" off the board (for the lights quares on the board)
I then ripped a 1 1/8" length off one side. That piece was then recut to 1 1/8" sq. x 90" long, for the chess pieces.
The remainder of the plank was ripped into 5-90" strips and resawn to 1 1/2" wide (the thickness ended up being a tich under 3/8")
The strips were crosscut into 25-18" pieces. We're allowed to use up to 5% of other material for decoration etc, so I used a bit of Walnut to make up the dark squares of the board, rather than staining some of the Maple.
I used 18 of those pieces for the top and bottom of the box and 6 more for the box sides. that left me with one spare.
The board edge frame came from the left over chess piece stock.
There was enough very thin material remaining to make a bunch of 1/4"x1/8" splines. splining the top, bottom, and side pieces made assembly easier in that surface alignment was basically automatic. The splines are only for that purpose and additional glue area.
The chess pieces are 3D scrollsawn.
https://suncatcherstudio.com/patterns/chess-pieces/
