Back in June when I bought my chess set just because it was glass and pretty (story here), I knew that the pads on the chess pieces might be a problem. The glue on those things tends to fail and the pads fall off. I also have the glass version of Mensch Argere Dich Nicht--the pads on those have been an issue, too. When you've got glass pieces on a glass board, they need to be padded so that the board won't get scratched or chipped.
So I hunted around on eBay until I found some white felt pads of similar size--they are not quite right for either set of game pieces but the pads will be simple to trim with scissors. I also bought Aleene's Clear Glue--great for when you don't want repairs to be too obvious.
But how do you glue a whole bunch of glass game pieces that won't stand on their rounded heads? I needed something that would hold them upright and something that would hold a number of pieces all at once. Time to think creatively!
That's when I happened to notice the blocks of fill-in foam on my "packing pile" (kind folks give me their leftover packing materials that I can re-use to pack my shipments safely). Fill-in foam is industrial-type stuff: the item to be shipped gets put in a box surrounded by plastic bags and the bags are filled with expanding foam that fills the space around the item. It's great primary packing material but can be hard for me to re-use since it's item-specific. In this case, it turned out to be the perfect solution.
I made X-slits with a box cutter and mashed each chess piece head down into the foam block. Easy-peasy. And just right for holding items to glue. I'm sure there are any number of ways that fill-in foam block could be used to hold items stationary like this.
Life is good.
Re-using is recycling.
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