How Pinteresting! Volume 1: Time to Toss the Dice

Simple Math!

New house with a nice deck in a great backyard

+

70 degree day

 =

restless Sheri outside crafting it up outside

Volume 1 of How Pinteresting! finds me wanting to make lawn dice. Only a handfull of people know what lawn dice are.

They are giant dice for games to be played outside in the grass. Yeah exactly what the name is: Lawn dice. Amazon has a set of roughly the same size we made for $49.50. I'm cheap so I decided to make my own.

We went to the Home Depot. I like Menards better but whatever. I wanted to make some kind of game for outside in our backyard. I told Chris that I was sick of staying inside and this day I would be outside doing .....something!

Apparently 4"x4"x8' actually means 3.5 inches x 3.5 inches x 8-ish feet. I should have done some research first or remembered the actual size is different from what the sign says. We had the lumber guy cut it into 4 inch chunks which ended up to be too big. We had him recut it for 3.5 inch cubes. Because I won't be called a cheater when playing games!



'Sup. You wanna roll with me and my big brothers you gotta know the rules of the game.



If you want to make your own here are my sorta instructions. I say sorta as I don't know what you have for tools. I myself have little to no tools for this. So bear with me if you have awesome tools. If you have those awesome tools then you can probably figure it out yourself from the pictures.

What you need:

4x4 lumber (we used untreated for a more natural look)

File (Am I the only one who calls it a rasp?)

medium grit sandpaper

wood burning tool with the circle attachment

stain (optional)

pencil

Yahtzee needs 5 dice, Farkle needs 6. Guess we're playing Yahtzee.



If you don't have a nice large  saw at home ask the lumber yard to cut it for you. Make sure you ask to have it cut into 3.5' cubes or measure it first.

You are going to be using your rasp A LOT. My rasp has four seperate textures. I used the roughest round texture to round the edges then the softest flat to sand it down. Make sure you round the corners. Most dice have round edges or your dice won't roll.

Dice = multiple cubes, Die = one cube.
Not to be confused with DIE SPIDER DIE!!!! OH DEAR LORD DIE!!





Also know what you'll be getting sawdust all over you and your work place. Well you WILL if you're doing it right. Be careful with the rasp. You'll probably hit your hand a couple of times. If you want wear work gloves.

Long orangy-red nails about to get nicked.



After you've worn down the edges it is time to smooth it out with medium grit sandpaper. I used only two pieces for ten dice. Not bad! Smooth down the corners and the edges you just rasped. You've probably noticed there are two flat sides that have wavy indented lines. You'll want to try to smooth these sides down as much as possible. Tiny pebble-like pieces of wood fall out so as you sand it take the rasp and tap it against the block. This helps get the pebble pieces out of the grain.



Did you know the dots on dice are called pips? Of course you did! But did you know Mat Cauthon's horse was called Pips? No you didn't because you have better things to do than read the Wheel of Time series.



All right! Now you have five (or six) smooth cubes!  But really no dice yet.

As you're sanding down the last two dice plug in your wood burner. That will give it time to warm up and you won't be using it when it is still too cool. BEFORE you plug it in though make sure you have the right piece screwed into the end. I used the flat disc that came with it. If you don't have a flat disc use the widest piece you have. Use a dime or a nickel as the template and draw the circles on each die then burn the whole circle.

A couple safety issues. DO NOT leave the burner unattended. Put it on something metal every time you set it down. Btw, target bags should not be too close to the tool. They get plastic goo on your burner. Learn from my experiences people! Also don't let it touch bare skin. 'OUCH damnit that hurt' carries on the wind pretty far outside...... Have a towel close by if you need to touch the end. I had to keep rescrewing the disc back into the tool.

Ya know I should mention right now something I should have said earlier. Make sure you mark lightly in pencil a dot where each pip needs to go. Otherwise you'll screw up and put two one's and no two's on one die if you get distracted. A good way to double check yourself is each opposite side adds up to 7. So 1;6, 2;5, 3;4 should be the pairing.



I'd really like to make a geeky NES Super Mario Brothers 3 World 4 joke here but I can't think of one.

 If you get what I just said you are a nerd who grew up in the 80s. 



So the amount of time to leave the tool on the side varies with you. If you want a darker pip leave it on for longer. You'll start to see colororing feather out from the disc as you hold it agains the wood. Check the color. You can always put the disc back down again. None of the pips will be perfect as the feathering blurs the edges a bit. Plus as you burn it you'll notice the wood burns nicely in some spots and not much at all in others. Play around a bit. If you are nervous take a scrap piece and play around.

Remember the two sides on each die I had you smooth down? Burning them is a pain. It takes about double the time it does on the other sides. You'll have to play around with those sides to get the pips to look nice.

After you've put the pips on there is something else you can do with the tool before you put it away. This isn't something I can really teach you though. I used the same flat edge to add some worn look to the wood. I just gently ran it along the edges and flat sides of the dice. You can kind of see it in the bottom picture below.

 Well this is as far as I got. I will be adding wording to one side. I'm thinking "Time to Toss the Dice". There is one more thing you can do if you want. If you don't like the color you can stain the dice. But I like the burn-staining on the edges and sides I did with the flat disc. Plus I'd like to think there will be grass stains on these puppies soon. Or so I hope.