Would this be a good board for my stones?

[palapiku]

Is there a reason people prefer 2 inch boards vs. 1 inch boards beyond, basically, "bigger is better"? Is the sound different, or do standard-sized stones look too thick on a 1-inch board or something?

The go board is quite big, so unless it's 2 inches or more it looks disproportionately thin.

[dragonstout83]

That seems like an unlikely explanation to me; tournament-sized chess boards are even larger (18 in x 18 in, usually with an extra border around it) and yet I've never seen a chess board even thicker than an inch! I think what makes the difference for Go boards is that wood grain is so important for Go, and a thicker board means more wood grain to admire on the sides. Except that since table boards are usually made of several pieces, the wood grain doesn't look that great on the side, in my opinion, different grains all jutting up against each other...

[imabuddha]

The real question to ask yourself when choosing a go board is:

"Does this board make my stones look fat?"

[EdLee]

yet I've never seen a chess board even thicker than an inch!

Maybe 2 reasons: chess pieces are usually much taller than Go stones, and culture & history.
Compare: Chinese chess (Xiangqi) and Japanese Shogi (both variants of chess, and both usually have flat pieces) --
Xiangqi is also usually played on thin boards, but Shogi boards come in all thicknesses, just like Go boards.

[palapiku]

yet I've never seen a chess board even thicker than an inch!

Fine chess sets have a very different aesthetics - for one, chess boards tend to have a frame around the playing area. A go board is just a block of wood, and should look like a block of wood, not a piece of plywood.

A thin, framed go board doesn't look so bad either - have a look at http://www.igocustom.com/wp-content/upl ... 0_0829.jpg (except on that one the stones look like they're falling off...). But a thin, frameless one seems incomplete.

[bogiesan]

to clean them with an egg, so I just wanted to double check since that seemed kind of ridiculous.

It is ridiculous, unless you want your set to become a nice breeding ground for all kinds of interesting lifeforms.

Ah, but see this video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsZIwsXpve8&feature=related

[tchan001]

The question then becomes "where do you get the bag of wax powder for the stones?"