My dad and i worked on a little project together while i was in Cold Lake for a week over the holidays:
Custom made, one of a kind (well 3 of a kind) folding dice boxes.
First we started with a plan
We then cut the walls out of a 16'x10" 3/4" knotty pine board. We had to cut two rings (12 in total) and brad-nail them together to make a 1' 1/2 wall height. You can tell by how the grain of the wood goes in opposite directions from the middle. We sanded them until they were flush together and appeared as one. Then I used a router to round the top edges off.
For the base we cut two pieces, one smaller then the other and glued them together. The smaller piece will form the raised base that the dice get rolled on, while leaving a dip for the dice to collect when clearing for a new roll.
Here you see 2 half’s all cut and ready to go.
A sneak peek at what they look like combined.
A few more ready to go.
We used felt for the dice surface, finding blue felt in Cold Lake was next to impossible, I could only get 9"x12" sheets which caused us to alter our original measurements smaller (boxes were suppose to be 1" wider and taller, with the dice collecting dip 2" instead of the final 1" 1/2). As it turns out, 1 more inch would have made them to wide for my TV tray tables, however 1" taller would have fit the table perfectly. Pretty much guess work since I did not have my tables or Heroscape dice to reference when we were coming up with the initial sizing.
We used this spray craft adhesive to secure the felt to the base. I had to mask off the lower part of the base so that the felt would not stick to the wood there and after trimming the edges I could just peel it off. (We learned this after our first attempt where we were scraping felt "fuzzes" from the part of the wood we did not want it to stick to.)
After applying the glue to both the felt and the base I laid it on top, this was particularly tricky with the blue since we had barely enough to cover end to end, I only had 1/4 of an inch to play with, and that glue stuck instantly on contact.
The below example shows that the outside wall fits over top of the base to give the felt a nice "tucked in" look like a professional casino table... or something.
As mentioned before, I masked the lower part of the base, so all I had to do was cut along the edge leaving a strip where the dip would be, then just peel off the excess.
After cutting off the excess felt.
Example of the blue side.
Once all the felt was done we could fit the walls to the base. We glued the walls down, which is why we had to trim the excess felt, so that we would have a wood on wood contact. This gave the top and bottom a nice smooth one piece look with no ugly nail or screw holes. I don’t have a good picture, but we put them each in a vice while the glue set for at least an hour and a half. This bond is permanent and will last forever.
As you can see in the above picture, the base was not flush with the walls. We used the router again to cut off the excess base to give the bottom a nice rounded look like the top and appear as one piece.
Then we stained them darker, this brought out the natural grain in the wood and gave them that hand made look.
Drying the bottoms after staining. Then we applied 3 coats of clear varnish.
Put two sides together and hinged them.
Added a simple yet functional latch on the front.
And that’s 3 dice boxes done.
Project took about 3 days, but only because we had to wait for glue and stain to dry and such. They cost aprox. $30 - $35 ea in materials. I'd like to get a wood burning set and burn the Heroscape logo into the top of each one eventually.
Basically I'd like to set some rules with these boxes.
1. Dice must land in the box to count (as always)
1.1 With these dice boxes they have to land on the raised felt, anything that lands in the dip have to be re-rolled.
2. before rolling, all un-used dice must be in the holding dip.
3. Attacker must always roll on red felt, deffender must always roll on blue felt.
Basically these rules will prevent that stray dice from mixing with the un-rolled dice.
Since the walls aren’t as high as our old boxes we cant toss the dice in anymore, or else they will bounce out of the box. They do work quite well if your rolling *normally* and not trying to play craps. Ustauk; we'll get you a cup. Oddly enough, the dice that came with the flag bearers don’t bounce as much; they are bigger but lighter and therefore less dense. They do combine the attack and defense shield on the same dice, all the more reason for the attacker and defender to roll on different felt if we use them. I personally still like the classic dice. The dice sound real nice when they hit the felt, then the side wood walls, like Vegas!
