English Chess Forum

From the ECF site:


Your chess sets need you!

We are looking for volunteers to help with the ECF’s ambitious Chess for Schools project. If you can spare an hour or even a few hours, we’d love to hear from you.

Volunteers can help in two ways:

1 By picking up some chess sets and delivering them to schools in your area. You can pick up 1 set or 100 - every little helps!

2 By sorting chess pieces into chess sets.

The chess sets and chess pieces are located at Holloid Plastics Factory in Basingstoke, Hampshire - the full address is below.

If you’d like to help, please contact Kirstie Lapworth on:
07805 515732 (mob), 01424 775 222

Email: Kirstie@englishchess.org.uk

Holloid Plastics Ltd
Stephenson Road
Houndmills Industrial Estate
Basingstoke
Hampshire
RG21 6XR

Soap Operas are occasionaly entertaining this one is not.

Seems like a good idea to me. The sooner these sets get delivered the better and there are bound to be some people who can help.

Kirstie is now planning bi-weekly updates on the project, so best of luck to her...

I have just spoken to Kirstie and she is very helpful. I am hoping to assist in distributing sets in my local area (Somerset). What I had not appreciated is the sheer size of the boxes. Ten sets come in a box that is 40cmx30cmx100cm (I make that the size of 3 Curver boxes). There are 69 School which have applied for sets in Somerset, so I am looking for quite considerable storage facilities!

......and sets are being distributed round Oxfordshire thanks to the good offices of Alan Kennedy of Witney Chess Club and others. Whether or not we get the right PR and other good things from the project, my sense is that the distribution of sets itself will be succeed (or fail) mainly through the effort (or lack of effort) of the various unsung heroes - the band of volunteers up and down the country who actually get things done.

Hats off to Kirstie and all those who are trying to get this to work.

Hi Matthew, I think there is something wrong with those dimensions. The curver boxes we use with 24 baged sets in each box are approx 42cm X 34cm X 24cm high. The volume of these sets & boxes is most important for people intending helping out. Perhaps Mike is able to get some reliable information from the people helping out in Oxfordshire. Transporting boxes that size is a bigger problem than temporary storage when you get back to home base. It will be a shame if a standard family car is too small to carry a reasonable number of the boxes.

The boxes are the same size as a kerbside recycling box. Not sure what these dimensions actually are, but definitely not as wide as 1 metre.

Edit: But not as small as a curver box. Unfortunately the boxes don't stack inside each other, or space could be saved that way when storing large numbers of them.

Good evening Heather, thanks for that information. Now I'm thinking more of the size of a recycling box for the sets are we talking about say 14 to 20 in a family car?

Hi Peter, I think that if you have the seats down you could stack them 2 high and 3 wide. Probably 9-12 max (depending on shape of car), or perhaps more if you can get them 4 wide. I'll try to remember to measure a box tomorrow.

Good morning Heather
Very much appreciate your help/advice. I think getting the box dimensions will be really useful to the volunteers planning to help with the distribution. How did you get on with the boards?
Thanks

I'm waiting to hear back from Alan's wife re measurements (he's currently abroad on business), so hopefully either Heather or I should have the answer soon.

I E-mailed Kirstie this morning and I have had a response already. She really is very professional. The dimensions that I quoted originally are correct, so each box is 30cmx40cmx100cm. Perhaps the boxes have changed since they went out in Oxford. People obviously have to consider the dimension when they are working out how they can help. You can probably only get sets for six schools in a car and for an area like mine where 69 Schools have applied for sets you need a whole garage to store them.

The box dimensions Alan Kennedy's wife has given me are 58cm x 38 cm x 28 cm. Most mysterious.

Kirstie has just called me to confirm that whilst there has been some variation in the size of boxes so far, from now on they will all come in a standard size of 60 cm x 40 cm x 30 cm (which sounds pretty much like the boxes that got delivered in Oxfordshire).