Modular Dice Tower - Gears

What a brilliant idea. In my excited haste to get it and assemble it I totally missed a pretty neat idea to add even more flair. Painting/staining parts.

It went to together with some medium level encouragement. Having a hobby knife is key. As mentioned in other reviews, getting the axles of the gear and meter in place do to one shorter rod was not easy, but It will sit in place with some adjustment. The plexiglass piece secures everything in place. Even with modification, Clamps were helpful to get everything to fit properly

Wanted to build it left sided. Used a video as a guide. Built it right sided.

And put the face plate on upside down.

Oh well, such is life

Every so mildly challenging , but fun to assemble set.

Let me start by noting that I have bought all of the module pieces. I wanted 2 3 module towers so I have 2 topes and 2 bottoms and 1 of each of the tower pieces. I have put all of the rest of the modules together and they work great, but not this one. There are so many pieces to this tower module. If you are lucky and everything fits together great. But what happened to me is that the outer box fits too snuggly for the inner box and the plexiglass to go in together. So after all my work which including staining, sanding, and lacquering. As I was delicately tapping the plexiglass into the shell, the bindings gave and the thing fell apart. There are too many variables and so when you get a set that is too tight, You won't know till the whole thing is together and falling apart in your hands.

The build wasn't too bad. I shaved each tab a little to ease assembly.

Wooden dice can sometimes sit in the gear and won't turn it. Standard plastic dice work great.

It's an added bonus to your die rolls when they give the gear a good spin.

I got this a year and a half ago and have been using this in 2-4 sessions week since. It's definitely tricky to assemble, especially for someone who hasn't done something before, but it came out pretty nice - especially after taking the time to stain & paint it. The only downside I can see is that at least once or twice a session, a die (particularly bigger ones) will get stuck on the 'needle' stick and we'll have to reach inside and poke it out. Other than that, a lot of fun to use.

I have two dice towers I have created using this modular system. I have a base + plinko + loader and a base + gears + loader. Of the two, I prefer the plinko tower. See my review of that module. The problems with the gear tumbler are numerous but very minor. Each of them would be nothing at all; together, they take a 5th star off this review. The issues I have are:

* When you have the loader just above this and you load from the side compartment, the dice can miss the main gear all together. Sort of defeats the purpose.
* The gauge dial that moves when the dice hit it can capture dice and not release them into the final stage of the tumbler.
* The small holes used for some of the pieces to go onto the dowels are very thin. I had one crack slightly, but I was able to glue it into place so it is fine now.
* The inner box final assembly bear to get together. At times you have nowhere you can place any pressure to get the joints to go together as the only points where it can happen are thin areas with a lot of decoration.
* The instructions for the right-side gear are on the left page, and the instructions for the left-side gear are on the right page.
* And so on.

Overall I like it. Just not as much as the plinko, which is sad, since this is the one I was excited about. :(