Gary Gifford wrote on Mon, Jan 9, 2006 10:23 PM UTC:
I set up a board for Mir32 and put my homemade 3D Cannons and 3D Elephants
on it. It then occured to me that others may benefit from these pieces,
which are simple to make and look pretty neat. To make Cannons: (1) buy a
cheap plastic set. (2) Carefully break or cut the turrets off of the Rooks
and sand or file smooth. (3) Carefully cut the top sphere off of 4 pawns.
(4) Glue the pawn-sphere (Cannon ball) at the top of the altered Rooks.
Note that you can keep white with white, or put a white 'cannon ball' in
a Black Cannon and visa versa to make them more noticeable. I kept mine
all one color. To make Elephants: Cut the center out of Bishops and glue
the Bishop tops to the bases. Now we have 'very short' Bishops which
make great Elephant pieces for Shatranj Variants and Mir32, etc. There is
no temptation to make Bishop moves with these pieces due to their truncated
appearance.