1962 Austin Enterprises ALCOA Chess Set Pieces

After seeing the prices for a real set go through the roof for no real reason other than people with more money than brains getting involved, I gave up hope of ever owning a real set. I should have bought the full set with board I saw 8 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 real chess nut to fork over that kind of dough. I began trying to draw them up 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.

Flash forward to a couple months ago and I came across 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 again appear 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 guesses to the sizes of the 3 missing pieces. I’m sure there are still some very 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 they would be so kind as to correct the measurements I have included on the drawings.

I added a cavity in the bottom which I am making a small disc of 316SS which I am gluing in for added weight to get the heft of the piece up to where it should be. Still a couple grams light but close enough.

Out of curiosity, I contacted a company (Stratsys) 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 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.

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.