Giant Dice

Having a fanciful idea of making a ball inside a ball, a block of fancy Tasmanian wood was purchased on an impulse buy. I quickly realized this wasn't going to happen and a simpler project was called for. The simplest I thought would be to cut it into a cube, add some dots on to it and create a dice or more accurately, as its singular, a die.

5-inch cube of wood

Empty aluminum beverage can

A piece of 6x6x5 inch wood was cut into a 5-inch cube using a cross-cut saw. As the wood was thicker than the saw's depth, the wood was rotated while being cut.

The cut cube needed to be made smooth, so it was rubbed on a sheet of number 40 sandpaper. This took a while. I would sand 50 stocks, then rotate the wood on the same side and do another 50 stocks. I estimate 900 strokes were carried out using this grade of sandpaper on the block.

Next, each side was stroked 100 times against no 80-grit sandpaper and a couple along the edges.

Eighty stocks on each side with number 120 grit sandpaper followed.

Then 50 stocks on each side with number 180 sandpaper.

Finally, 40 stocks on each side using number 240 sandpaper.

A food safe wood oil was rubbed into the sanded wooden cube. It had quite a pleasant orange aroma. Three coats were applied with 10 minutes wait between coats.

Dots for each side of the dice were punched out of a flattened aluminium beverage can. These were stuck on to the cube using blue tac rather than using glue, in case I decide to remove them in the future and just show the interesting wood grain.