Intro
The Novag Citrine is a handsome table top chess computer with a wooden auto sensory board. It is nice enough to have it somewhere in your living room on a table, but I thought it would be even nicer to have it built into a chess table.
Here is a nice picture of my Citrine before it was turned into a table:
And here you see the Citrine turned into a table:
I choose a light oak wood for my table because it is not too expensive and is easy to work with. The light color of the table makes for a nice contrast with the dark parts of the Citrine.
I had the miter cuts of the frame done at a wood store. I told them to make sure the inner width to be 37 cm. This turned out to be to tight a fit for the Citrine. I had to sand the four sides a little bit to make the Citrine fit.
Because I wanted the on/off button and menu button on the side of the table, I had to do some wiring inside the Citrine. I am sure this will void the warranty.
Also I wanted to get rid of the adaptor, so I did a home made battery back using 6 large 1.5v batteries.
Building the table
Unfortunately I didn't make pictures of the whole building process. But I'll try to describe the process using some drawings:
The legs of the table are 45 mm thick and 600 mm long bars. They are joined together with 22 mm thick planks. The joints are reinforced with dowels.
I attached the planks about 10 mm inwards to get a nice classic look.
The dowels you see on top of the planks are later used to hold the table top frame in place.
I first made the two benches separately and then joined them together with the remaining two planks.
The table top frame consists of four planks of 22 mm with a 45 degree miter cut.The inner width of the frame should be 370 mm or a little bit less.
When the frame is in place you can use your sanding machine to precisely fit the Citrine.
You could join the planks together with dowels and glue, but I just attached each plank to the base of the table separately.
To allow for some space for the Citrine's buttons and connectors, I cut out a part of one of the frame planks. The Citrine is fitted into the frame from the bottom up and there should be enough space to plug in the wires.
Here you see the finished table from the front and from the top:
Next is rewiring the Citrine to get the buttons on the side of the table working. I'll explain about the battery back and show how I fixed the Citrine into the frame.
next page - Wiring the Citrine >