Key Our Cars

Well I’m not sure how I’ve lived this long without ever seeing or hearing about Dice Towers but someone brought it to my attention so of course I’m having to build one. Â  It’s a rather pointless little thing but it’s a) a craft project which I enjoy and b) cool in a pointless chez geek way and that’s good enough for me.

I’m prototyping one now out of foamboard.  I picked up some quarter inch red oak boards to make the real one out of but prototype once, measure twice, cut once is my motto where possible. Â  A big sheet of foam core costs $4 and I can prototype 2 or 3 designs out of it easy.  Red oak boards cost about $4 each and I’ll need 3 of them for the final project so $4 versus $12 is an easy call to make.

I’m not sure if I’ll end up with a tray + tower or a drawbridge design.  Laura is also making herself one and she’s going a little crazy in design in terms of paint and flocking and stones and the like.  Myself I’ll probably use a dark stain, almost black after a couple of coats myself.  I did have thoughts of putting a little clock in it just because it seemed a good place to put one but changing the batteries would be a pain in the ass unless I make one side removable in some fashion, maybe a hinge?  That’s what prototyping is all about.

In other news I got my shipment of tiney biney magnets.  OMG they’re strong for something that’s so small.  I just need to figure out what I’m going to use to hold them in place in the disks.  I picked up a bunch of 1″ wooden disks for a couple of bucks to try on them.  I wouldn’t mind getting some polycarbonate clear disks but we’ll see how cost effective that might be.  If I end up spending as much as on Alea Tools the it’s kind of a wash other than the fun of actually making them which does count for quite a bit with me.

The image in this post is an example of a dice tower, one of the more crafty ones, it is NOT mine.