Making a Wooden Dice Tray and Dice Tower

Our Friday game nights used to end with someone on their hands and knees under the sofa looking for a die. Dice bounced off the table, rolled into the snack bowl and once disappeared into the air vent, never to be seen again. My daughter suggested we buy a plastic dice tray. I suggested we make a proper one, with a matching dice tower, from offcuts I already had in the workshop.

It took one weekend and about 22 dollars in extra materials. It is a satisfying small project for anyone comfortable with basic joinery, and it gets used every week.

Why a tray and a tower

A dice tray is simply a shallow box lined with something soft. It contains the roll and quiets the noise. A dice tower is a small vertical box with internal baffles. You drop dice in the top, they bounce down through the ramps and roll out of the bottom into the tray. It feels a little theatrical, and it also settles arguments about whether someone is controlling their throws.

Our Friday group plays everything from board games to dominoes and cards, and one of the adults usually has a laptop open to the weekend football results and his pool picks on ankertoto between rounds. A tray keeps the dice in one place however busy the table gets, and the tower adds a small ritual to every roll that the children love.

Materials and cut list

I used walnut offcuts for the tray walls and tower, with a thin plywood base and a felt lining. Any hardwood works. Softwoods like pine are fine too, but they dent more easily when dice hit them.

Building the tray

The tray is a simple box. I used miter joints at the corners because the walnut grain looks good wrapping around, but butt joints with glue and small brads are perfectly strong for something this small. Cut a groove a quarter inch up from the bottom edge of each side so the base panel floats in it.

Dry fit everything before gluing. Miters on small boxes are unforgiving, and a tiny error on each cut adds up to a visible gap on the last corner. If this is your first box, the notes in reading wood grain before you cut anything will help you pick which faces go on the outside.

Once glued, sand the top edges round so they are comfortable to rest a hand on. Then line the base with felt.

Building the tower

The tower is a tall open box with three angled ramps inside. The ramps are what make it work. Each one slopes at roughly 45 degrees and alternates direction, so a die falls, hits the first ramp, bounces to the opposite side, hits the second and so on, before exiting through a small opening at the front of the base.

1. Glue the tower sides to the back panel and let it set.
2. Mark the ramp positions inside: about 2 inches, 4 inches and 6 inches from the top, alternating sides.
3. Glue each baffle in place at its angle, leaving about a one inch gap at the lower end for dice to drop through.
4. Cut a 1.5 inch opening at the bottom of the front panel before gluing it on.
5. Glue on the front panel. Line the ramps with thin felt to soften the noise.

Test with your largest dice before the final glue up. If a die jams, widen the gap or reduce the ramp angle slightly.

The advice I disagree with: line everything with thick foam

Many dice tray guides recommend thick foam or neoprene for the lining because it is the quietest option. It is quiet. It is also too soft. Dice sink into it and often land at an angle, leaning against the foam rather than lying flat, which leads to more arguments than it prevents.

Thin felt over a hard base is the better choice. The dice still roll and settle properly, the noise is reduced by more than half and the surface stays flat. If you want it quieter still, add a second layer of felt, not foam.

Finishing

I finished both pieces with two coats of hardwax oil, which brings out the walnut grain and holds up well to handling. Avoid thick film finishes like polyurethane on the inside surfaces. They can make dice skid rather than roll.

The tray and tower have been in use every Friday since spring. Nobody has searched under the sofa for a die since. If you have a pile of offcuts waiting for a use, the tools list in the five hand tools worth buying before any others covers everything needed for this project. More small builds are in our Woodworking section.