Skip to Content
 

Painted wooden cube redux.

12 replies [Last post]
Mon, 03/29/2004 - 18:05
Yekrats
Offline
Joined: 08/11/2008

Hi there, folks...

I know this topic has been discussed to pieces (ha-ha, I crack myself up sometimes!) but I thought I bring up the "painted wooden cubes" topic again. Talking to my good pal Jim Doherty of Eight Foot Llama, he said the only place he's been able to find wooden (painted) pieces is Smith Wood at www.smithwood.com .

So, today I got a quote from them. I picked their half-inch cube. They said that a minimum order for one color would be 10,000 (10 thousand) wooden cubes per color. He quoted me a price at about 3.5 cents per cube.

Frankly, having 50 or 60 thousand little cubes around my house sounds like a little bit much, and beyond my means. However, if there are enough interested parties, we might be able to split the cubes several ways. One thousand cubes for $35 seems pretty reasonable for some high-quality wooden pieces. Personally I wouldn't want more than 5000 cubes to start off -- (5 colors, of ~1000 cubes each) Assuming you guys like this idea, then you only need to order 45000 more for this to become a reality! Hurry while supplies last! :)

So, what do you think? Would you be interested in a big order for some nice painted wooden pieces? If so, we can argue about what we're going to get. I'm not dead-set on a half-inch cube, but I picked it because it seemed like a "generic" piece that might be able to fit any game. I'm also not sure about the colors, yet.

So, what do you think?
-- Scott S.

Top
Tue, 03/30/2004 - 19:28
#1
FastLearner
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Painted wooden cube redux.

I'm interested, though the cubes would need to be smaller, either 1/4" or 3/8". There's also someone on Spielfrieks who's looking... I'll point him here.

-- Matthew

Top
Tue, 03/30/2004 - 19:42
#2
Anonymous
Painted wooden cube redux.

FastLearner wrote:
I'm interested, though the cubes would need to be smaller, either 1/4" or 3/8".

I favor the 3/8" size, personally. Pre-painted would be nice. How many colors are you considering getting?

- Brett
www.OrcSports.com <- Now open!

Top
Tue, 03/30/2004 - 20:02
#3
Oracle
Offline
Joined: 06/22/2010
Painted wooden cube redux.

I'm interested, but I'd want 2 sizes like 3/8" and 3/4" and each in the same 4 colours, and I'd only want 100-200 of each size/colour combo, so I don't think I can join your order.

Where does it say they offer the blocks coloured? I've been planning to order some unpainted cubes in both sizes from their smaller quantity affiliate. They have 1000 3/8" for 2.7 cents each and 3/4" for 4.2 cents each. 100 would be 3.5 cents and 5.2 cents each.

If the larger quantity ones are available painted, maybe the smaller quantity ones are too.

Jason

Top
Tue, 03/30/2004 - 23:10
#4
Anonymous
Painted wooden cube redux.

How does this look —
http://www.craftparts.com/mall/page27.asp

That's from the same page, but following their link for small orders.

They're not painted, but for smaller quantities for prototypes, that might not be such a problem.

Incidentally...Anybody know of a place to find smaller flat wood squares (i.e., for Scrabble or such)? The 1”x1” on that site are reasonable, but a bit too large for my purposes.

Top
Wed, 03/31/2004 - 03:20
#5
Sebastian
Offline
Joined: 07/27/2008
Re: Painted wooden cube redux.

Yekrats wrote:
I know this topic has been discussed to pieces (ha-ha, I crack myself up sometimes!) but I thought I bring up the "painted wooden cubes" topic again. Talking to my good pal Jim Doherty of Eight Foot Llama, he said the only place he's been able to find wooden (painted) pieces is Smith Wood at www.smithwood.com .

You can get them in more reasonable amounts from http://www.holzbrettspiele.de/ . The main disadvantages are that the site is in german, and cost of shipping.

Top
Thu, 04/01/2004 - 15:11
#6
FastLearner
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Painted wooden cube redux.

For anyone who wants unpainted cubes, Benny's Woodcrafts & Supplies is running a sale right now (any quantity):

1/4" cubes $0.02 each (2 cents)

3/8" cubes $0.025 each (2.5 cents)

1/2" cubes $0.03 each (3 cents)

They've also got a big sale going on lots of their other wooden bits.

I bought cubes (blocks) from them before and am quite happy with them... a few were imperfect but they included more than the quantities I asked for so it worked out nicely.

Here are the cubes: http://www.woodcraftssupplies.com/blocks.html

And obviously the store is at http://www.woodcraftssupplies.com

-- Matthew

Top
Tue, 08/24/2004 - 03:24
#7
Oracle
Offline
Joined: 06/22/2010
Painted wooden cube redux.

Has anyone discovered a source of painted wooden cubes with reasonable prices, quantities, and shipping fees?

I'm about to order the cubes FL just talked about, and I thought I'd check one more time first.

Also, is there any interest in some sort of group buy? Wood Craft Supplies charges $6.50 to ship small orders, but orders over $75 are free shipping. Up to 1lb costs $3.85 to ship, so there would be some savings there. Also, assuming we'd all be interested in the same sort of parts, we could save more in larger quantities.

Jason

Top
Tue, 08/24/2004 - 09:55
#8
RookieDesign
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Painted wooden cube redux.

I ordered a 1000 blocks from Woodcraftssupplies.com last week. Still waiting today. Since I'm in Canada it could take longer.

I'm gonna try to die them with vegetable colorant. (Cake colorant). I've read on this board that it work. I don't know if it will hold correctly.

For the correct color, I'm going to try to mix the colorant in the same ratio as the RGB color that I fix for my game. I have no clue yet if this work but I'll experiment a bit.

Have a good day to you all.

Top
Tue, 08/24/2004 - 12:30
#9
Anonymous
Painted wooden cube redux.

I did a small run of wooden cubes that I painted with spray paint. I did some with primer and some without. The ones without came out just as good as the ones with primer. The colors look great. I used a regular craft paint (I think it was Krylon or something like that). Because it dries so fast, you can do all but one side, wait a minute or two and then do the last side (and second coats if you want).

This would be a lot of work for larger runs of pieces, but it does work and the results look good.

Top
Tue, 08/24/2004 - 14:27
#10
Oracle
Offline
Joined: 06/22/2010
Painted wooden cube redux.

RookieDesign wrote:
For the correct color, I'm going to try to mix the colorant in the same ratio as the RGB color that I fix for my game. I have no clue yet if this work but I'll experiment a bit.

Thanks for the information. I'll probably just order some then (once I give up on my square sticks I mention in another post).

This method of color mixing won't work though. When you mix RGB colors on your computer, it's called "additive" mixing; that is the colors add their shares to the total and mixing all three at full brightness will give white.

When you mix dyes, paints, inks in your printer, etc, it's called "subtractive" mixing; that is the colors subtract their shares to the total, and mixing all three at full strength will give you black.

The CMYK value on your computer might give you what you want, but I'm not sure about that.

SiskNY wrote:
I did a small run of wooden cubes that I painted with spray paint. I did some with primer and some without. The ones without came out just as good as the ones with primer. The colors look great. I used a regular craft paint (I think it was Krylon or something like that). Because it dries so fast, you can do all but one side, wait a minute or two and then do the last side (and second coats if you want).

That's good to know. I'm considering spray painting or Seth's idea of using sharpie markers. He was less enthusiastic about how the sharpies came out than you are about the paint, but it sounds easier and will definately be a lot less messy.

Jason

Top
Tue, 08/24/2004 - 15:42
#11
Anonymous
Painted wooden cube redux.

Oracle wrote:
This method of color mixing won't work though. When you mix RGB colors on your computer, it's called "additive" mixing; that is the colors add their shares to the total and mixing all three at full brightness will give white.

When you mix dyes, paints, inks in your printer, etc, it's called "subtractive" mixing; that is the colors subtract their shares to the total, and mixing all three at full strength will give you black.

You're exactly right. Here's a great link that details more about color addition. Just remember that the colors in computer RGB space are creted using light and not a physical pigment. The reason that colors don't always look the same on screen as they do when printed is because of the difference between additive color and subtractive color.

The CMYK values would be closer if you actually have true "process" cyan, magenta, yellow and black pigments, which I doubt you will find in a food colorant. You could mix pigments from a printer refil kit into VERY rough proportions of a CMYK value. Bear in mind that, unless you have access to some highly accurate apparatus, pigment mixing is a very imprecise science!

You could try mixing the pigments a little at a time until you come close to your layout. Just remember to print out your designs first (since the colors will look different in print than they do onscreen). Also remember that pigments tend to be lighter when fluid than they are when dry.

I suggest buying some spray paint and going that route (won't come off and is very durable) since the colored caps of the paint cans are very close to the finished color of the paint. You can easily match a print out of your design to the colors you need by just taking it to the store and comparing it to the paint cans. I have done just that many times and the results are very acceptible.

Top
Wed, 08/25/2004 - 18:17
#12
Anonymous
Painted wooden cube redux.

I didn't see it mentioned in this thread, but Koplow Games offers 16mm blank colored cubes (basically, blank standard d6) for $.09/each. Of course, their minimum order is $150, but that's another option. Colors available are white, red, green, black, yellow, and blue.

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut