1962 Austin Enterprises ALCOA Chess Set Pieces

thingiverse

After seeing prices for authentic sets skyrocket (over $1300, even $2400!) for no reason other than wealthy individuals jumping into the market, I gave up hope of ever owning a real set. I should have bought the full set with board I saw eight years ago for $400 but as I didn't have the cash at the time I had to pass. And now that the set was featured in John Wick Parabellum (at 1:24:21) it's likely the price may go up a bit further. You'd have to be a serious chess enthusiast to shell out that kind of money. I began trying to draw them from pictures way back when but put them aside after some early dismal failures during my first days of 3D printing all those years ago. Fast forward to a couple months ago and I stumbled upon a set of pieces being broken up on eBay. I managed to obtain a Pawn, Knight, and Bishop but the King, Queen, and Rook sold off before I could get my purchase in. Maybe someday those three pieces may appear again and I can get one of each. I went back and dug out my old drawings and updated the pieces I had since I could now measure an actual piece. From there I was able to make better estimates to the sizes of the three missing pieces. I'm sure there are still some minor errors in my models, but it's close enough for me. I am including a PDF of some desired dimensions should anyone have the three missing pieces. If you do have them, would you be so kind as to correct the measurements I have included on the drawings, please contact me with your corrections. Please use a decent set of digital calipers. I would also be willing to "rent" the piece from you for a reasonable sum if you would be so inclined as to allow me to measure it. I added a cavity in the bottom for which I am making a small disc of 316SS which is glued in for added weight to get the heft of the piece up to where it should be. This was calculated from the Pawn only and is still a couple grams light but close enough. I did not bother to do a separate weight for the other pieces as I don't feel that is really necessary in a knock-off anyway. Out of curiosity, I contacted a company (Stratasys) to see if it would be possible to produce these in an SLS aluminum. It is safe to say that unless you actually own one of these machines or work at a company who wouldn't mind in the least if you used their extremely expensive machine, it will be far less expensive to buy one of the real sets off eBay for the prices you'll find them listed for. I had a quote of over $1200. They even tried to knock it down some but only got down to $800. Neither of these were even full aluminum, they were a 30% aluminum flake in a nylon body. To go full aluminum would be exponentially more expensive. So I don't think we will have any fake sets running around anytime soon. I have not yet settled on what I will do for a board. I am thinking along the lines of polished aluminum with alodined or maybe anodized squares but I am still conducting a lot of research in that direction.