To my surprise, I was having a very difficult time picking out a Christmas gift for Kareshi. I could think of 1,000 things he would love to have, but none of them felt like the "right" gift for him.
This is what I finally came up with:
A set of Game Science's "high precision" gaming dice, with a customized dice box.
The idea came to me shortly after Thanksgiving. I found the dice set on ThinkGeek, one of my favorite online stores. I sketched rough plans and e-mailed them to my dad. When I got home, we talked through the plans and finalized the design.
We chose to use red oak for the box and walnut for the interior.
After collecting all the materials, the next step, of course, is getting the wood to be the correct size.
We then glued the pieces together to create a complete box. Once the box had dried, the corners were rounded and the box was cut to make two identical halves.
The next part was making the dividers. This was the most challenging part to me. My father had a pretty good idea of how he thought we should do this, but I was totally lost. He had to redo a lot of my work. I am thankful he is patient with me!
We sized and cut strips of wood to fit snugly in our box halves.
The main tool used to create the notches was the table saw. Now, I don't know technical terms at all, so please bare with me on this explanation. Each of the slots are one inch, so the notches has to be in one inch increments. We put a piece of wood against the fence so that when the wood was pushed against it, the blade would hit at exactly one inch.
Each notch took a little over two and a half cuts.
The wood burning was my favorite step. I did a simple border on the top and a to/from on the bottom.
I then sanded the halves down so everything was flush.
My father chiseled away little groves for the hinges to fit.
Finally, we finished, waxed, and screwed the hinges and latch on the box.
I am so happy with how this turned out! I also laid some felt in the compartments and sewed a little red pouch to hold the box.
I gave it to Kareshi this morning, and he was speechless! Sometimes, I think dice are the only reason he loves Dungeons and Dragons. XD He loves the dice case and it was totally worth all the work. I cannot wait until we have a chance to play DnD again so he can try them out!
