Klin Zha set

If you're a Trekkie, you're probably familiar with Klin Zha, the chess variant played by the Klingons in Star Trek. I did make a Klin Zha set a long time ago, using leather for a board, and leather-on-plastic-triangles for the pieces.

That set is long gone, like so many of my early sets, and it certainly wasn't my best effort, so nothing much lost ...

Inspired by some posts on the Klin Zha Facebook page, I decided I was going to have another attempt at creating a Klin Zha set. Considering options, I stumbled across Star Trek micro-machines, and managed to get my hands on a job lot of them off eBay:

Plenty of spaceships to create two sets of pieces! Actually, plenty to create three sets of pieces! One set representing the Klingon Empire, painted gold:

One set representing the Romulan Alliance, painted metallic green:

And one set representing the Federation, painted silver:

Leather is quite a Klingon material, so for the board I decided to stick to leather, in three colours: beige and black for the fields, and brown for the edge of the board.

Trying out different stitches on our new sewing machine, I found one with a clear Klingon 'feel' to it (the top one in the picture below):

First job was to cut out all the triangular fields ...

... and attach them to the back of the board.

Fields were sewn together and to the back of the board using brown thread and the 'Klingon' stitching.

To identify the starting point of each of the three fleets, I created black leather circles with the identifying logos of the three participants painted on.

And then it came down to creating the edges of the board ...

... incorporating the logos at the three points ...

... and folding over and sewing together the edges.

Board done!!

So here, on the board and in close-up, the fleets of the Klingon Empire, Romulan Alliance and the Federation.

As the board is too big to easily store (1.33m each side) it hangs on our bedroom wall when not used.

Creating this Klin Zha set took a lot of time and effort, and even though I say so myself, I'm really proud of it. Most definitely much better than my first attempt, and quite possibly my best chess set so far.