(1) Each of the pieces has a set of individual wells that the dice sit in. I wanted the boxes to not have sharp corners on the top and bottom, so I used a 1/4' rounding bit on my router to take the top edges off each piece. There are some saw burns on the ends of some of the pieces of the maple stock, but I decided it didn't bother me so I didn't spend any time trying to get rid of them - they would be 'rustic.' Also, some of the pieces have divots from mounting screws that had been used to hold the piece in place when I built the telescope.

If there were a substantial difference, I would have had to use a more robust cutting bit.īecause this is wood from my scrap bin, it is less than perfect in some regards. For the minor differences, I evened out the pieces by clamping the blocks together and running my router down the mismatched side using a laminate trimming bit. Because they were all the result of building matched pieces for my telescope, they were pretty closely matched in size. I matched the individual pieces of stock together for size. A little work with two pairs of pliers yielded a nice supply of little magnets! You could probably find them in nametag sets at an office supply store. I always keep these and throw them in my materials box. Very often I lose my nametag (it usually hooks on something and gets knocked off without me noticing - the life of an astronomer is rugged), but the magnetic back falls in my pocket. However, my nametag at work has a magnetic back on it. Neodymium magnets seem to be the thing (they are strong), but finding small ones proved difficult. (2) Magnets - I wanted the boxes to be securely shut without external mechanisms that protrude and catch on things. I found enough scrap pieces to make the 4 boxes shown here - a good spectrum of sizes and shapes to play around with. The boxes are two pieces that form each side of the dice box, so I was looking for pieces that were at least 3/4' thick. I first found pieces of wood suitable for the project, then designed around them. (1) Wood - I didn't start with a particular box design in mind. paper patterns for drilling and artifying.

small (~5/16' diameter) neodymium magnets.scrap wood stock, matched pieces 3/4' thick.This instructable documents an exercise to make my own wooden dice chests - crafted boxes with individual wells to keep and protect sets of gaming dice. I've always carried them around in a traditional dice bag, but lately a variety of companies have started producing wooden dice boxes, finely crafted from exotic woods. Various games will require more or less of different types of these basic shapes, but a 'standard' set in my world is 7 dice. Added to the mix is also a 10-sided die ('d10'), which together with another d10 can roll percentages ('d%'). Polyhedral dice take the form of the classic Platonic solids - a tetrahedron ('d4'), a cube ('d6'), an octahedron ('d8), a dodecahedron ('d12'), and an icosahedron ('d20'). I've always been enthralled by the cerebral challenge of solving mysteries and completing epic quests, but all the while playing the risks through the intricate rolling of dice. At the center of many games, role-playing games in particular, are dice. Pretty cool, simple box, but challenging to get the dovetails just right.Since my youth I have been a tabletop gamer, but have always loved role-playing games the most. A tap on the palm in the opposite corner will reseat the ball bearing, locking the box again. A tap against the palm on the appropriate corner will displace the hidden magnetized ball-bearing and allow you to slide the top off diagonally, revealing the dice. At first glance, and maybe longer for some, it’s hard to imagine how it would open, as all four sides of the box appear to have a dovetail locking joint on it. Made out of African Padauk, the box design is an engineers box commonly called “the impossible dovetail box.” I’ve made a bunch of these things in the past as Christmas gifts for co-workers too.

The pips (dots on the dice) were burned into them with a sharpened cherry dowel checked into the drill press. While I was at it, I also made a pair with South American Purpleheart and Cherry for contrasting color and weight. I settled on Desert Ironwood as it is very dense but attainable in smaller quantities. I researched which kinds of hardwoods were the densest (heaviest) because any wood of this size would struggle in the weight department. Now I’m quite certain they are not Vegas quality, nor weight, but they are still pretty cool. I think this was more of a theoretical question than a bona fide request, but I thought it was an interesting challenge. He wondered if you could get Vegas quality dice, and weight, from woodworking tools. One day, my buddy Neil asked me if it would be possible to make a precision set of wooden dice.

Cool dice box