A Chess Set Made from Hardware Store Supplies

It’s amazing, really. You work with hardware pieces all the time – rounded tops of bolts, the strong facades of a flanged hex nut – and note them for the mechanical fasteners they are. But when a sculptor and avid chess player walk through the hardware store…well:

When I saw the little bin containing two different types of castle nuts,I immediately thought of rooks. At the time my three sons and I hosted a weekly chess club,so chess was on my mind a lot. With my boys in tow,I returned with graph paper and we computed what sorts of bits we might want (we didn’t know for sure) for each type of piece and how many in total. An hour later, after poring over numerous bins and waiting for the clerk to saw the threaded rod into measured lengths (for kings, rooks,and bishops), we went home with about fifteen pounds of loot, including spray paint for the black pieces. 

   See how it was done at Julia’s Flickr pool and Makezine.