I made this chessboard for my wife before we were married, when I still had the time to do this sort of thing!

I did this because my Dad at the time had acquired an old marquetry process from an elderly friend who's father had been a well respected marquetry craftsman.

The Black and white squares are made from two pieces of burr walnut veneer cut on a traditional marquetry horse.
The decorated strips either side (for taken pieces) were ready made out of fake ivory and fake mother of pearl from the 20s and made of celluloid I think
(The marquetry horse cuts a packet of veneers so that you make multiple copies (I have a further two sets of cur pieces somewhere which I have never made up)

The steps of manufacture were as follows:
1) Make template on computer (Using !draw on the Acorn Archimedes)
2) glue this to ply and nail into packet with the uncut veneer
3) cut out on the horse
4) glue the pieces to newspaper
5) Paint filler into the cracks - this was some archaic mixture of powdered stuff (goodness knows what it was - probably banned now) and wood-glue
6) reverse this and glue to ply substrate
7) glue plain veneer to the reverse of the ply to balance the stresses
8) Scrape off newspaper and sand flat
9) glue veneer round the edges
10) French polish 4 or 5 times (It should have been more but there is a limit to my patience)
11) Glue felt to back
12) Play!