Jumbo Jenga

My friend Joey Novak recently posted about mak­ing some giant Jenga blocks, so I thought I’d give it a shot, too.

First, I needed to know what kind of wood to buy. Jenga blocks are 0.57″ x 1″ x 3″ (height x width x length). The eas­i­est wood to get would be either 2×4 (1.5″ x 3.5″) or 2×3 (1.5″ x 2.5″) studs. So if we upsize the Jenga blocks with a 1 to 3 ratio for the width/length, then our Jenga blocks would be either 1.5″ x 3.5″ x 10.5″ (2×4) with a height/width ratio of 0.43″ to 1″ or 1.5″ x 2.5″ x 7.5″ (2×3) with a height/width ratio of 0.6″ to 1″.

So what does all that mean? It means I should go with the 2×3 studs if I want the most  Jenga-like blocks.

Next I needed to know how much wood I needed. Jenga has 54 blocks, and since I decided to use 2×3 studs, that means I needed 405″ of lum­ber. Lowe’s sells 2×3×96″ studs for only $1.83 a piece, so I picked up 5 (only $9.15!), giv­ing me the abil­ity to make 60 jumbo Jenga blocks.

The last prepa­ra­tion needed was tools. I was short a few minor tools, but for a few dol­lars off of a gift card I got for Christ­mas, I ended up with the following:

• Cord­less orbital sander with P80 and P220 sandpaper
• Cord­less cir­cu­lar saw
• Back­saw
• Square
• Clamps
• Kitchen table chairs

Not ideal, but it works. I clamped a 2×3 to my kitchen chairs, marked the cuts using the square and a pen­cil, then sawed through with the cir­cu­lar saw. For some rea­son, my cir­cu­lar saw is just a pinch too small to cut through a 2×3, so I had to use the back­saw to fin­ish the cuts.

Next, I used the P80 sand­pa­per to smooth each sur­face and edge, and to remove any pen­cil marks or mark­ings that came on the lum­ber. This was a tedious task because I had to hold the sander in my lap as if it were a bench sander, and I kept run­ning out of bat­tery power. A corded bench sander would have made things a lot easier.

Last, a quick sand with the P220 to make each block nice and smooth so they’ll slide eas­ily while play­ing Jenga.

Because of my bat­tery issues, I only had time today to cut and sand one of my pieces of 2×3 (12 blocks), but here are the results so far:

After pulling the wrong block

A block cas­tle with Lego knights

I’m very excited to fin­ish the rest of the blocks! I’m going to cut the rest of the lum­ber tomor­row, and work on sand­ing it over the next few days.

Do you have any ideas for easy wood work­ing projects? Please let me know in the comments!

Update (1−2−2010): Today I cut the other 4 studs that I bought, so now I have 60 blocks total. I still need to sand 48 of the blocks, but it is a frigid 33° F out­side, and lately I’ve become a bit of a wuss when it comes to cold. Per­haps Mon­day or Tues­day when it warms up a little.