Handmade Jumbo Chonk D20 Resin Dice

When I was first looking into making handmade resin dice, I did some looking around to see what was already out there, and one of the first things I thought to myself was "Wow! Handmade dice are so expensive!" Well, turns out dice making takes a lot of time and precision, requires a lot of specialized equipment, and are essentially tiny pieces of art. 

Let’s walk through the steps it takes to make a set of dice. 

 The first step is setting up and pouring the dice (my favorite part). I have to get all the materials together and placed where they need to go. I then stir the resin for 4 minutes and after the resin is thoroughly mixed and all the streaks are gone, I then add all the different colors and inclusions (glitter, flakes, fibers, etc.) After each of the colors are mixed in, all the resin gets put into a vacuum chamber for 10 minutes which removes air bubbles that were created during the mixing process. Then it’s finally time to pour the resin into the dice mold, which takes a bit of time as well!  At minimum, pouring three sets takes about two hours to do, although it can definitely take longer! (But let’s say each set takes 45 minutes minimum to pour).

 Next, I put the dice in a pressure pot to cure for 24 hours under about 32 psi of pressure. This takes all of the remaining air bubbles in the resin that the vacuum chamber didn’t get and squishes them down until they're so small they can't even be seen. This results in crystal clear resin that is bubble free! 

 After the 24 hours of curing are up, the molds can be removed from the pressure pot, and the dice can be removed from the molds. This is the fun part, I finally get to see how the dice turned out! It takes me about 5min to do. 

 The dice then sit for another 3 + days to finish curing completely. 

 After the dice have fully cured, I move on to sanding and polishing. First, I use a low grit sandpaper to get off all the lips, bumps, and any raised faces off. I then move on to hand sanding in various grits going all the way up to 7000. I then go through a set of polishing papers to get the dice to a nice finish on the sides that needed sanding. The whole sanding process takes me roughly 1 ½ hours or more per set of dice. 

 These roughly polished dice then get put into a vibratory tumbler with some plastic polish and ceramic media and are left to polish for about a week and a half. I check the dice 2-3 times a day to see how they are doing and add more polish to the tumbler. Overall, I would estimate that all the checking and refreshing takes me about 30 minutes per set of dice. 

 Once they are all polished, the dice get pulled out of the tumbler and put into a bowl of warm soapy water and then into an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner for 10 minutes per set. Afterwards, I scrub them with a soft toothbrush. The numbers of the dice get filled with a lot of gunk from the sanding (resin dust) and polishing (excess polish) and it needs cleaned out. This takes me about 30 minutes per set. 

 This leads on to the last step of finishing the dice which is inking (filing in the numbers). I ink my dice with acrylic paint using a small paintbrush and then wipe excess paint off the surface of each face with a paper towel. It's always amazing to me how much the number color can affect the feel of a set of dice; it's like magic! Inking a set of dice takes me about 45 minutes. 

 So overall, between 45 mins pouring, 5 mins unmolding, 90 mins sanding, 30 mins refreshing the polishing tumblers, 40 mins cleaning, and 45min inking, that brings us to roughly 4 hours of work time per set of dice (minimum). And that doesn't even take into account making the molds (they take a couple hours to make), making inclusions to be put in the dice, cleaning up the workspace, packaging items to be shipped, and of course all the equipment, tools, and materials needed to make resin dice.