Tim Galloway
United States
Lusby
Maryland
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Ok so here was my first attempt at a dice tower. Just to give you a little background on this story, it didn't come out like I wanted. Mind you it did come out ok, but not like I imagined. I will not be posting the plans for this tower because again, this was only the 1.0 version. I will however be making another one, and hopefully the 2.0 will be what I wanted. Also this is coincidently my first time doing anything like this, so my familiarity with wood working etc. is non existant (hence some of my goofy mistakes) well without any more suspense here it goes.
Ok so I started out easy enough with the desire to have a dice tower. As I looked around online I noted two things. 1). I didn't want to pay $59+ for a nice one. 2). I didn't see any plans out there that I liked in making my own.
So I began making plans and buying tools and supplies. I had this grand vision of what my dice tower wanted to be. Without giving away what my next tower will be I will just give you the basic outline.
Here is what I wanted:
I. Quiet
II. Able to support 15+ (1/2") dice with plenty of room to tumble
III. Made to be sturdy
IV. Nice looking
V. Able to go compact for storage
VI. Game neutral (for use with any game)
I ended up deciding to use 1/4" X 6" x 48" poplar boards. Because I like the way wooden ones look. After I had all my plans, tools, and measurements made I did some cutting and sat at this point.
Well now that all my cuts and measurements are made, I started assembling pieces together. It was right at this moment that I realized the way I made my cuts and measurements (due specifically to my amatuerish wood working skills) That this happened...
V. Able to go compact for storage
My wife actually came up with a good idea to salvage my design and it included attaching the tray to the tower permanently with runners on the bottom to secure the two together. (plus it serves as a double purpose as I ended up putting felt on the runners so they don't scratch my table)
These are the runners as they look at the bottom. I told my wife I would give her props for helping me come up with an idea that would salvage my failed design.
After that I got the baffles (or ramps) going in place and made sure all my angles and trig calculations were correct. I wanted as much overlap and as little a space for the dice to drop to the next level as possible, and happily enough all of those plans were spot on.
Ok at this point it not being able to collapse for storage was a big deal breaker for me. Rather than scrap the whole project I decided to finish the whole thing differently than originally intended (as noted above with the runners and conjoined tray idea above). I had a lot of things I got that I didn't want to waste on a dice tower that wasn't going to meet each and every need I had. So then I changed some of my plans going with ...
a solid black design...
and grey felt...
Now I am not going to give away my original design idea for finishing, but suffice to say that I wasn't pleased with the solid black design. So I decided to put an elder sign on the left and right side of it in high flourescent teal glow in the dark paint. That's right it's from Arkham horror... (We tend to play that game the most right now)...
VI. Game neutral (for use with any game)
(but not really cause even though it has elder signs on it I will still probably use it for other dice games...)
So here you have it the finished product.
And here is the elder sign in action in the dark
I was going to do a star on one side and a branch on the other, but I was afraid my friends who play the game with me would not get it.. So I opted for the same burning star on both sides. I hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as I did. Next time... Dice Tower v. 2.0 will be much better as there were lots of lessons learned. But on the plus side it is very, very quiet.
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desmodus
France
Bantzenheim
Die Ärzte, Bad Religioon, Bauhaus, Dom Perignon, In Extremo, Joy Division, Lacrimosa, New Model Army, Nirvana, Officine Panerai, Placebo, Rammstein, The Sisters of Mercy, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, The Mission, Die Toten Hosen, Umbra et Imago
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Great job!
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Riz the Bloody
United States
Roseburg
Oregon
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Looks sweet dude! I like the black and grey, and the star kicks.
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Posted Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:19 pm
