DIY Wooden Yard Dice

Make your own wooden yard dice, perfect for your next back yard barbeque, tailgate party, beach day, or other outdoor gathering. Let the good times roll by playing all your favorite classic dice games with these giant wooden dice. This makes a great gift for Father’s Day!

For the last few weeks we had planned on doing a “camping” day at a local forest preserve with good friends. We were looking forward to a full day of hiking, cooking out, having a camp fire, and playing lawn games. We are all fans of bocce ball and bags (or corn hole if you’re from around here), but I decided to throw a new one into the mix with some large wooden yard dice we could use to play all sorts of lawn dice games.

This was a relatively easy project. I had all of the supplies on hand except the wooden blocks. By the way, if you’re not into DIY, you can purchase a pre-made version of Yard Dice from Amazon.

Yard Dice Supplies:

• 6 unfinished wooden blocks – 3.5″-4″
• Electric sander or sand paper
• Wood burner with circular wood stamp (< amazon link)
• Wood Stain (optional)
• Wood sealer top coat
• Paint brush or wiping cloth for stain and sealer

You can have the wood cut at Lowe’s or Home Depot if you don’t have your own saw. You may also be able to find pre-made unfinished wooden blocks. I used 3.5″ blocks. I wouldn’t go larger than 4″ if you will likely have kids playing with you.

I started by sanding all sides of my wooden blocks and lightly rounded the edges and corners.

I wiped all the dust clean and then set out to burn all of the dots on my dice. Of course I wanted my dice to have the correct dice pattern which I was easily able to find with a quick search. Using a pencil, I marked where each of my dots should go. Then I started burning.

I’ve only done a few other wood burning projects. This one didn’t require a lot of precision. This took a bit of time though just because I had to let my wood burning tool heat up for an additional half minute to minute between making each circle.

After burning all the dots on my dice, I sealed them with a gel polyurethane. You could also use regular polyurethane. I just happened to have this on hand from a previous project. For a gel poly, I use a clean rag to apply.

I originally planned to use a light wood stain before sealing with poly, but in the end I decided I liked the contrast of the lighter wood color with just the clear coat, which does darken the wood slightly.

I did 2 coats on all sides with about 12 hours of drying time in between. This is a bit tedious, just for the fact that you can’t do all the sides at the same time. I’m just impatient!

Once dry, they’re ready to roll.

Coming soon, I’ll create a printable of different yard dice games. In the meantime, you can check out these suggestions from the official Snake Eyes Yard Dice. If you’re not into making your own yard dice, you can buy them from Amazon or their website.

I convinced Carter to try out a round of “Snake Eyes” with me. Using a rope, we created a circle about 3 feet in diameter. We took turns trying to roll the dice into the circle with the person with the most points in the circle winning the round. The winner is the person who makes it to 21 first or gets all dice as “snake eyes” or 1’s.

I should probably be ashamed to admit that Carter actually beat me in our first game. I did let him stand closer though!