Last time I finished up the day with 5 almost-cubes of once scrap pine now destined to transform into giant playing dice.
Today I'm just going to finish the cuts with the handsaw to make them actual cubes
Yep
So here we go. Looking a little more cubular now, if you know what I mean...
At this point I'm at an impasse. A pedestal or bench beltsander is the necessary tool for the next part of the job, but I don't have one. I need to remove the blue paint, sand the sides and edges smooth and make the overall dimensions consistent. I could use sandpaper and do it all by hand, but... nah. Fuck that.
I might know where there's one I can use. The Men's Shed in the next town over: Burra.
The Burra Men's Shed. It's about 40 k's away. I know a local bloke here that goes there once a month. He showed me an intricate wooden sign he'd cut out with a scroll saw there one time, for the general store. I've got his phone number, should give him a ring and see if they have a belt sander (I'd be surprised if they didn't) and then see if I could join him next time he heads there.
Having had a closer look at my future dice I've noticed some have cracks and splits. Should probably do something about that. It's to be expected as they're just softwood pine, but I hadn't stopped and considered it till now. They're surface level at the moment, the problem is that with use, the wear and tear of many tumbles inside a bucket and across the yard could eventually make them split, which would kind of suck. How you meant to play Yahtzee with less than 5 dice?
Perhaps then, rather than drilling shallow holes with a spade bit and painting the insides to make dots — which was my original thinking — I might try and find some nice screws for that instead.
Something like these maybe, but with larger diameter heads. I want the dots to look in proportion to the dice themselves, so the finished set is the same basic design as any playing dice we're familiar with, just bigger. A nicer deep brass colour would be cool too, but who knows. I need to do some research, see what's out there.
Longish (but not too long) screws would have the extra benefit of reinforcing the structural integrity of each die a bit, as it were. Two birds, one stone.
All photos are mine except the image of the screws, which was just lifted from eBay
