While creating the pawn I followed the suggested method of selecting a face, extruding and scaling. However, as part of this process each ring seems to have been duplicated a few times, while occupying the same space. I eventually cleaned this up by selecting each ring and moving the edge circle slightly to separate it, then dissolving the selected edge until I was left with a single edge ring at each point that one was required.
So not a great problem but can anyone suggest how I might have created the problem in the first place so that I can avoid it in future?
My guess would be hitting extrude sometimes and not moving it. Or moving it in a way you did not want, and then hitting ‘esc’ to cancel the movement. That actually leaves the extrude new geometry right on top of the things it was created from. Which you then repeat, extrude again, this time moving it to somewhere you are happy with and confirming the position.
Good thought thanks. I have been away from Blender for a while and have been struggling to get to grips again with both the mouse input and the keyboard controls. So that kind of fumbling could well be something that I did.