Vintage Boxwood and Gaboon Ebony 4 inch chess set queens.
Screen Queens
10 cm queens from a 1950ies czech klubovka set, very good in form. They are resting with their friends in a Bohemian lead crystal beer mug box when not playing or strolling.
This queen comes from really humble origins. It came with a generic 12 inch travel chess board from India, that I bought on Amazon for 24 Euros. While I was quite pleased with the board, the pieces seemed to have been dipped in some kind of resin, that had dried quite unevenly. It felt es if someone had played with them for years with sticky fingers and they had developed a thick crust. It really repulsed me to touch them.
One Saturday evening I was so annoyed with the pieces, that I decided to de-crust them with whatever I had in hand, which was nail polish remover. I had to soak them for 2 hours and then scraped off the varnish with some cheap dental curette. I didn't really care anymore, if I finished the pieces off during the process.
Afterwards I reconditioned them, polished them, waited, repeated the conditioning and polishing, reglued the weights in properly with glue and wood kit, decided to put a thin layer of glossy varnish on them, because polishing didn't work out without proper tools, and finally refelted them.
I am quite happy, how the pieces turned out, given the ordeal they went through.
Show your queens!