I have advertised unsuccessfully in a Chess Life “Wanted” ad to obtain rubber stamps for making chess diagrams. I have received various inquiries from persons who, like myself, would care to purchase them also. They do not notice the “Wanted” classification. I can purchase blank books at Borders and elsewhere, but they will not fit into a printer to receive software-generated diagrams.
If anyone knows a source, I would appreciate your sharing. Thanks.
I have always made my own with Excel. You shade the squares alternately and put a border around the 8 x 8 diagram. You will have to adjust the size and width of the cells to achieve the proper size. With a decent version of Excel or some other worksheet there will be about 2-4 “Chess” fonts that can be used. The are all generally the same in that K=king, N=Knight, L=Bishop, Q=Queeen, R=Rook, P=Pawn. Holding the shift key down (or not) will determine if the figure is White or Black.
If you truely want a diagram stamper [very very small sized: to create something 2" x 2" or smaller] contact the Illinois Chess Association, although you will likely need to buy your own ink pads to differentiate between White and Black pieces.
Larry S. Cohen
You mean the paper won’t fit?
If you go to any decent Quick Print shop (like Kinko’s), they can run a wide variety of paper and even cover stock on thier higher end printers. Dunno the price per page, but if your just doing a few pages, it shouldn’t be a big problem.
-they’ll have to run it on a a machine capable of doing print-on-demand books. -Thats why it can run such a large variety of paper stock.
You’d actually be better off using paper at the print shop though. They have book quality paper, but its already been tested to run in thier machines.
I mean the book doesn’t fit into the printer. I wrote concerning a blank book whivh I can buy at Borders or elsewhere.
The USCF used to sell a rubber stamp for the chess board along with individual piece stamps. These were in the correspondence chess area.
I still have mine, but need to remember exactly where they are.
I imagine someplace should sell them.
There are still places that sell custom rubber stamps as well. You could have them make you one for a chess board design.
I got to where I used the written symbols for the pieces. The basic style I use comes from the book titled something like Chess Master at Any Age.
I don’t know if this will help in your application, or not. If it doesn’t I apologize in advance.
But I put photos into my Fishing Journal using Post-It Photo Paper. The stuff I have is not glossy at all. Picture a 4"x6" sheet of post-it style paper with two strips of post-it adhesive running up the vertical column, with a peel-off backing. It works beautifully for the purpose I use it for.
It would be no challenge to me to print a diagram to that paper on inkjet, trim it, and then mount it into a book-style journal or whatever. (In fact, I might could get two diagrams per sheet.) [Actually I’d set the diagram in ChessBase, copy it over to Paint, save it, go for the second diagram from CB to Paint and save, open a preset template file, C/P each diagram into the template (saving intermediate,) and print. Sounds like a lot of work, but it isn’t to me.]
I know that wasn’t what you are exactly looking for, but hope it helps!
I bought a set of those years ago, to use on postal chess postcards. I think they used to make a rubber stamp of a chessboard, too.
I haven’t seen them advertised anywhere in a long time. I wonder if Joan Dubois remembers where the USCF got them from.
Trouble is, you can’t double the number of page thicknesses in the volume because the binding doesn’t expand. Additionally, the point of having a bound volume is to have permanent storage, not removable inserts between the bound leaves of the book.
Not sure what you mean by ‘removable inserts.’ I suppose the post-it adhesive may eventually wear out someday (dunno,) but my photos in my journal aren’t “inserts” in the way I would think of them.
As to doubling the page widths / stretching or breaking the spine or doubling the width of the journal… I haven’t noticed that in my journal. But I can’t say it’s absolutely impossible, either.
At any rate, you certainly know what you’re after and I know this ain’t it. 
Hope you can find a set of stamps still that works for you!
I remember one guy who used to keep score with those. It didn’t seem like a real efficient use of his time.
I remember one teenager who tried keeping score during 10-second rapid games — oh, wait a minute, that was (forget it).
Almost any office supply store will make custom rubber stamps. All you have to do is provide an actual-size blackline master on white paper. Of course, to make a full set of chess piece images will require a minimum of 12 stamps – six white figures, six black – and that’s not counting a stamp for the dark squares of the board. Now, if you’re just thinking of stamping the figurines into the analysis/adjournment diagram on a standard scoresheet, the dozen figurine stamps will suffice, and you don’t have to be particularly neat about it. But have you really thought about how fastidiously you’ll need to position your stamps to make a readable diagram from scratch? Is this really worth the time and expense to you?
What you really need, I think, is one single, large stamp of an eight-by-eight square grid, perhaps with rank numbers and file letters along the edges. (All squares should be empty – otherwise you won’t be able to read what you write on them.) Stamp this grid on your page, then complete the diagram by writing in letters to represent the pieces and circling the ones belonging to white. (This last bit is a go notation convention that I’ve borrowed for when I record chess positions.)
I used to have a set of rubber stamp chess pieces. I had a larger stamp to make a board, too. I seem to have lost them over the years, though. Maybe they’ll turn up.
Speaking of time-consuming, a player from Rockford, Illinois used to keep score in figurine algebraic.
This same player, when he would annotate his games for a magazine, used descriptive for the moves and algebraic for the variations.
Bill Smythe
I wonder if the stamp advertised at the link below is what you want:
By itself, it is not sufficiently useful. I would still need to put the pieces on the squares of the diagram. But thanks for the tip. It gives me a line of inquiry.
Actually, you can get by with only six stamps. Black pieces can be stamped upside-down, if you want to. (Or go with twelve. If you’ve building custom stamps…) But that assumes you have pre-printed diagrams with black squares (or shade them manually, ugh!)… If not, then it’s the squares you need six of each for (black square pawn, white square pawn, etc.), plus a “black square” blank stamp, for a total of thirteen. Add a grid stamp for the board and you’ve got fourteen.
If I’m diagramming by pencil I use uppercase for White and lowercase for Black, reflecting ASCII diagram notation convention. But I like your idea better, as it’s hard sometimes to tell the difference when it comes to Pawns and Kings. My FENGEN spreadsheet uses ASCII diagram entry and converts that over to FEN. (I’m planning on finally releasing FENGEN to the public on Wednesday.)
You know I might know someone who has one.
Joan is going to look through her files to see if she can dig up where the USCF got those rubber stamp sets from.
I am reminded of Saint Joan.