Complete How-To: Make a Travel Dice Box with Built-In Tower 

Am I the only one who enjoys the sound of the dice on the wood over the sound on the felt?

Update: I managed to build half a dozen of these dice box/ towers in a day, and I have sold them over a period of two months, and at a nice profit, too. I have not done anymore due to this covid thing, though. Looking forward to getting back into making a few more, boxes and cash :o) I have been working on revisions to my original idea, for the sake of testing new materials and increasing their durability and quality.

Love this idea. If you don't mind, I've worked out a bit of a fix for you, though. Instead of planting a ramp in the receiving tray, I placed a narrow ramp just under the last baffle in the tower as a kind of a kick out for the dice. I just used a felted Popsicle stick along the width of the tower at a 45 degree angle, facing into the receiving tray. It fits nicely into that space, unobtrusively, and works very well. No issues closing the box, no need to shave the last baffle. This fix also works in both designs as the tower is pretty much self contained. I used this with an old jewelry box with a deeper tray. I managed to build the tower outside the box, then install it in the lid once it was finished.

This really pretty good. I’ve got too many project going right now but I’d like to make of of these someday. Good tutorial

What a great idea and great execution on it! The book covering at the end is a brilliant twist!

I have a campaign coming to an end soon. I think I might make one of these for each of the players.

I just got done making mine and using it for the first time today. I dont know how many times I watched your video before finally doing it. Had to go to all 3 craft stores to get all the parts needed :D I love it and how it turned out. I never would have thought of doing this on my own. Thank you !

If you use a craft store box, instead of having the wasted space to the left and right of the dice-roller, you could probably make a pencil holder on one side and a spot to store minis on the other. It's a little more finagling but could be neat.

This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm not the best with this type of work, but I think I could put together something like this for my wife. Thank you for all the tips, tricks and notes throughout the video.

Thanks to your video, I've just finished my dice tower. :)

The paper templet you did for the Felt is a tip I needed thank you

I loved it. I specially loved the one at the end that looks like a book!

FANTASTIC! So quiet and easy to port! I especially love how clever the design is of the ramp at the bottom. THE BOOK design?! Be still my heart!

watching this i realized you mentioned the angled opening at the top of the tower for dice rolling purposes, but it probably also helps greatly with the actual closing of the box as well. the angle at the top will help clear the bottom of the box as you open or shut it. Functional for more then one purpose! i love it!

Great video! Will def be adding this to favorites and coming back to it for pointers and info when I make my own box! After some thought, I think I'll use dowels rather than ramps for more of a plinko style drop, as well as place a box to catch the dice at the bottom so I can have storage for dice on the sides while rolling w/o them bumping into each other. SO happy I found this video! Thank you again for the inspiration!

Personally like the click clacks so I'm gonna leave the felt off of the baffles

I found my project for the holiday break. Thank you for sharing!

Awesome idea. I had a spare craft box and thought about using it as a dice box but didnt really have a clear idea how to do it. You have given me some great ideas. Thanks

Fantastic idea for a low budget custom box and tower - might have to try this out myself!

This is great! Awesome idea for the chain to keep the top from flopping open! I was searching for a solution for that. Thanks!

WOW!! Amazing and beautiful! Also...love your dice color choices. :)

It turned out very cool! Thank you for the video! Greetings from Russia :)

An inspiring video! I’ve been thinking about what kind of dice tray to make for myself and my players for a while now. Think I’ll steal your idea and do a little customization for my DMing needs! 🧐

This is soooo cool, i really want to try to make one

holy crap how do you only have 1 like? i love this, i actually am opening an etsy store because i use these exact boxes but i do acrylic and resin on the outside and just plain felt inside, never once thought of doing a built in tower! im very impressed. ^_^ feel free to message me if you ever want to do a collaboration!!

This is wonderful, and it doesn't break the bank.

Fantastic build! You are my hero!

This is awesome! I def want to try and make the book version! Is there a chance that you could do a tutorial for that one?

A really great project and I liked the idea of making templates to fit the felt to the box well.

Seems I am a little late to view this, this is an amazing video. I do woodworking and was looking for a rough idea of what to do, but I love what you have done. I will be building this for a Christmas present, I’ll let you guys know how it goes

I've made something similar. Your felt work is making me want to step up my game. I used a stiff hinge that only opens 90 degrees instead of a chain. Thank you for the inspiration to keep me wanting to improve my own work

Found my next peoject! This is great, dont change a thing. I am so glad i stumbled on this.

Great video and thank you for linking the music.

FIY all the boxes from Joann's are made with the metric scale. Just wanted to let you know, it will make measuring for future projects easier.

This was fantastic! Thanks for sharing this. A friend of mine has started a new D&D5e campaign after 10+ years of no RPGing, and I've been thinking of making a dice tower. Using a premade box from a crafting store as a base to start is a great idea.

Great video

I love this design! I'm going to make several adaptations on it for Yule gifts! But one observation on your last step from the perspective of a wood worker. You covered the entire cover panel with contact cement, adhered the felt, then applied wood glue OVER the contact cement. This is not an ideal way to do this. You might be better off masking those areas with tape to keep contact cement off the structural joint. An easy option is: Put blue painters tape on the back side of the plate. Trace your felt template onto that and cut away the tape where you want felt to stick. then coat with contact cement as you did and remove the masking before it tacks up. Apply the felt and now you have a clean wood surface to glue the plate to the frame.

really loved the video.. those are some awesome tips and ideas :D thank you!!

I LOVE this project! Awesome tip to start with blank wooden craft store boxes, very accessible materials! And when I saw your Spell book alternative design at the end, all kinds of creative ideas started to bubble up! Thanks for the video!

This is a nice mini tower. Thanks!

Nice idea. I was looking for a way to use cigar boxes to make a dice tower/tray/storage. My son makes minis with his 3D printer and this would also work for storing them, all I would need to do is put some dragon foam on one side.

pretty neat. I never made a dice tower, but I did make a basic dice box similar in design using similar techniques a bit ago. pretty fun! I like the extra attention to detail here.

Best #dice tower/box design ever!! The felt idea was genius, and so well done. The design is elegant, yet simple and practical. I loved the book one, it was so f***ing cool! Would be a great gift to give young board gamers

this is awesome! I love the book idea.

great idea. Thank you :D

just a thought but you might want to use the miter box to cut an angle on the baffles so that they sit flush against the sides and you can glue to the sides for extra strength

Amazing tutorial... I'm thinking on going even further and add some foam on the top sides to help keeping the dice from rattling. So that at the end of the game you just put it on the sides and close it... I'm not really sure it will work, but I need to try it 😁

thanks for this!! amazing video

Great vid. About to try to make a dice box/tray and this built in tower it great. Although I do love the click clack of dice so might not do all the same felting. XD

Lovely work! Makers FTW :)

Brilliant idea. And great work :)

One suggestion would be to put a third, center piece in the ramp because that balsa wood is so thin it coukd use a bit of extra support

You should paint and stain and felt things before you glue for easy access

Love this!

Joann's has a thin foam pad in the kids crafting area that might work for sound damping as well.

That was so cool.

I like the idea in that initially one would not know it is a dice tower/tray/storage combination. Factor in that this is very much hand made compared to most systems that tend to be run through a laser in shaping the principle components. Many systems appear to be pieces that are slotted together on location and then taken apart for transport. Atleast this one is a single piece. Yes the video is long but then again the system being hand made would take longer over lasering though I do agree that some editing could be employed to maybe reduce the video to maybe 30 minutes playing Devils advocate. On the idea of the size, one could reduce the overall size of the system but pushing things towards pocket sized but then you would then be moving away from hand made handicrafts style towards the heavily engineered.

gread video and concept. but I think this video could've been 10 minutes long instead of 50.

Nice video however it would’ve been Good if you did a full test run with the completed box without the music so we could see what the final product would sound like and looked as a completed box.

The bookish one is way more epic... that's really inspiring. - Back to the crafting table! :D

Honest ignorance here, once you started having issues with the third baffle, why did you not just take it out altogether? Personally, I think it looks nicer if you can't see the baffles, and it doesn't seem like there is space to have three unseen baffles. Are three baffles that much better than two?

I was a bit confused with your baffles since they didn't stop the dice from getting stuck on the lid lip. Could you instead rotate the baffles 90 degrees in the square of the tower so that they are ramps off the back of the lid and cover piece. If you do that you could put the lowest one inside the lid and, with a bit of trimming on the tower cover, not put anything in the bottom side of the box. Just a thought. This was really good and I appreciate you doing this.

Any videos on the book dice tower build?

I probably would have cut the edges of the baffles that attach to the wall at an angle, but amazing work!

The two side pieces on the lid would make a nice place to keep pencils

Thanks for the amazing idea and tutorial. I’m making my box now and I have run into a problem with the cover piece at the end of the build: it’s too thick and pushed the box open slightly when closed. I can latch it but it won’t seem to close all the way with the 1/16 inch thick wood. Do you think that 1/32 would be too thin or would the felt backing bolster it enough to be solid?

I love this and plan to make these for my kids at some point. Do you still plan to put the download on your blog for those of us who are not at all crafty?

Just a suggestion to save u a ton of time. Use flocking instead of felt. Much easier and faster!

you might want to put some weight in the front to keep it from falling over

I would have filled the gap of the ramp with another triangle of wood to give it more support. Not due to the dice themselves but because of the human factor... If someone were to check out the box and accidentally press too hard on the ramp, bye bye ramp.

You know where I can get those boxes without giving money to hobby lobby?

For the book version, how did you replicate the pages?

How did you get the page detail on the book box? I'm making one and having a hell of a time figuring out the page detail

Should have used lobster clasps for the chain

Just some ideas for improvement here. The edges of your 3 ramps could be filed down to have a round edge instead of a sharp one. Why not have the face plate cover all 3 ramps? Looks really bad with the 3rd ramp visibly sticking out. Also, why make the plate same color/material as the rest of the box? Instead of balsa wood, why not use a metal plate with a nice engraving, like your initials or a d20 or the Critical Role logo? Why not have the bottom tray divided into 3 parts with dice falling into the central one and spare dice sitting in the left/right compartment? These could also be more than just compartments, they could contain sunken slots where your dice sit, eliminating the need to bring dice in a separate bag. Also, while at it, why not invest in some nice metal dice and equip the sunken slots with magnets that will hold them in place? The magnets could be hidden by felt. Also a friendly advice, I've noticed you have a set of translucent blue dice (absolutely love those) but I'm not sure if using a blue felt with those dice is a good idea. You want to be able to quickly read the result of you roll, I would go for a red/blue combo.

I think this video would be better if you made one off camera first. Then when you video making the next one there aren't as many mistakes and the video would be shorter and thus more watchable. I do like the concept, tho.

What type of leather straps did you use for the book one at the end of the video

U R a GENIUS !👍👍👍👍👍

All my felt got fuzzy putting it in got glue on my fingers like a noob

I'm curious what the final cost of the project was.

You should make them and then sell them to the not so crafty people it would bring in extra income for you as well and they look well made I'd buy one from you

If you don't like the length of the video just put TLDW. You'd save alot of time for people reading comments and the OP. TLDR: stop whining about the length of a craft video.

Poor ring

a lot of things need work, the video is too long, and the thing is anything but portable...not hates, kind critic, but needed

logan paul is proud!

Good idea, bad making. And 50 minutes? 15 was enough.