Giant Jenga Set

In my middle school, we have a class called AMPed in this class we instruct our own projects and when I found out that there would be a wood shop in the middle school this year I started to think about what to make. I have made many things in the wood shop here but the biggest project so far is the Jenga. I decided to do this project because I love making something like a game that people can play and all can see, so I decided to put it at the school so everyone can play. so, if you like people to see what you make and use it this is the perfect project for you. ( the picture above is me presenting what I made to the middle school because we need proof that we are actually working on something. )

Step 1: Tools

the tools I used are just simple woodshop tools that every woodshop should or does have so I used the following

mighter saw

electric sander

electrical plainer

so 3 simple tools and if you don't have all of these tools you can substitute them, like instead of a mighter saw you could use a band saw or hand saw, for an electric plainer you can use a hand plainer instead, and for an electric sander you can just hand sand it (that will probably be harder but look better than an electric one.)

Step 2: Getting Your Wood

I live in an area where we do not have much access to wood so getting pine or any wood from a conifer is rather hard, but we do have woods such as Teak or Rubberwood so I used Rubberwood because it is lighter and less dense, but it looks beautiful when sanded and plained. otherwise what kind of wood you use is up to you. the one thing you want to watch though is how wide your wood is because it has to be one third as wide as it is long and one 6th as tall as it is long. I got my wood at a small store that sold a small amount of wood but much more than I needed I only needed 3 big pieces of wood total for 56 Jenga blocks.

Step 3: Cutting You Wood

you can decide how nice you want your Jenga set to be you can plain it and sand it, only sand it, or neither. but first, you need to cut your pieces if you are going to plain it and sand it then I strongly recommend cutting your pieces at twice the length so it is much easier to plain so you can make each piece equal in accordance to its height also don't worry if a piece is a different height than another because the game does not work it each piece is exactly the same height.

Step 4: Plaining Your Wood (optional)

if you do not know how to use an electric plainer you can learn here: the first step to plaining is to take a crayon and scribble all over the top do this on both sides so you can know when the wood is evenly cut when the crayon marks are all gone this way it is all evenly cut. then just send the wood through the machine repeat until finished

Step 5: Cutting the Wood Again ( If Plained )

So, if you plained you wood you would need to cut your wood in half I used a Mighter Saw but if you do not have that, you can use a band saw or hand saw I do not recommend a Table Saw because it is a bit less exact. then if you used a Mighter. Just cut the wood and you've got yourself an almost finished Jenga block and you are ready to sand it. (Be very careful if you are cutting with a saw that has a wider blade to cit it as close to the middle as possible)

Step 6: Sand That Baby!

the next and last step you want to do is sand your corners and the faces of your wood. I did this using an electric sander to sand the edges I used a belt sander but this was my mistake the belt sander was too rough and it would sand off too much too fast this made the corners look deformed so I suggest using the electric sander this will look much better so remember to take your time. I also recommend using lower grit so the proses will go faster but still be careful not to sand off more than needed.