Lego Dice Tower

Updated October 18 I wanted to get a dice tower/dice boot for use in at least one of my current RPGs (1st Sunday of the month Shadowrun 4th Ed Missions), but I couldn't find one at my FLGS as the item was apparently out of production. I started to dig around on the Net and found a few places that either had instructions for modifying the Chessex Dice Boot (covering the acrylic with felt) or making one from various kinds of wood that one can find at hobby stores like Michael's. Also there were a number of wooden towers available for sale, but at $50 and several weeks to delivery I wasn't willing to buy any of those. So, I dug out my two boxes of old Lego sets and built myself a tower similar to one that I had seen on another site.It took a few hours, most of which was spent digging through the boxes looking for appropriate pieces. I built several designs and then tore them apart when flaws were discovered (such as areas that the dice could get stuck inside the tower). This is the front view of the tower with the dice tray. I dug out all the flats I could find which helped the dice come away from the bottom of the tower. This is the side view of the tower. I put the large black flats on angle bricks so that getting them into the top of the tower was easier. I can now pour all 36 dice from a chessex cube into the top of it without spilling any of them. Not shown is the final modification which was a normal height brick placed under the tower end of the device to create a slope in the tray. This helped keep the dice from bunching up near the bottom of the ramp when I threw in tons of dice all at once. So, I couldn't just let this sit once I'd built it. I've redone it at least twice since the pictures above. The first rebuild increased the height of the tower to help increase the spacing between the "baffles" inside so that more and larger dice can make it through. The original design worked fine with D6s, but not with D20s. So, the tower grew by 3 full rows of bricks. The next alteration was to change out the flats at the top of the tower that were attached to the rocking bricks with roofing pieces. The advantage of the roofing pieces is that they can't be knocked flat as dice are poured into the top of the tower. I could have purchased the bricks from the Online Lego Store via their Pick-A-Brick program, but decided to try my local Lego store which has a wall of bricks (only about 40 to choose from and they change weekly). I was able to find roofing tiles, but had to settle for red ones rather than black or white. I also obtained more bricks (green) for the sidewall around the roofing tiles. The last alteration was the reconstruction of the tower with all white bricks, rather than the mixture of white, red, and black that it previously had. Also the front face was altered to include several sections of transparent bricks giving one a view into the tower. I'll probably rebuild this part again as I just stacked the bricks up one on top of the other which provides no reinforcement. Front view of the tower with the windows. Shows the green bricks that make up the sidewall of the funnel. Looking down the throat of the tower. The topmost row is white roofing tiles with red making up the rest. So, I couldn't just let this sit, but had to continue tinkering with it. The previous designs worked well enough, but they were a bit fragile to transport around. I could partially disassemble the last version, but bricks would still get knocked loose. So, I was back at the LEGO store to pick up some more transparent bricks and came across some new base plates in the Brick Wall. The new plates are part number 30645, but don't seem to be available on the pick-a-brick part of the online LEGO store. The new design seems to be less fragile as I can separate the two base plates for transport. It also has a wider funnel for taking in dice, but, for now, is a bit shorter than the previous designs. It only has two baffles before the bottom instead of the three that the older designs contained.