I have been looking at the the swirly, shimmery, D&D dice made by such companies as Crystal Caste and Chessex and I started to wonder how they are made and what materials they use. Does anyone know? Then I started to wonder by what processes I could make my own dice and what tools and knowledge I would need. I guess I could caste metal dice or carve stone dice (doesn’t sound easy) or maybe put hot glass or plastics in molds? Any insight or links into these methods or related to my above question would be helpful. Thanks!
The authoritative, but dated Scarne’s Complete Guide to Gambling says all modern dice are made of plastic. High-quality ones are sawn from square rods of cellulose The spots are drilled out to about 0.017 of an inch and then the holes filled in with a white plastic with the same mass as the base material.
Casino dice are made to a standard size of 0.750 of an inch and are called ‘Perfect’ dice. They often have a casino logo and a control number on them.
Does that help?
Not really but thanks. I guess I am more interested in ways I could go about making my own dice.
Bone, ivory, wood?
Six siders are simple. Anything else either requires tedious cutting and polishing and then usually end up too soft or an actual molding machine and the correct molds. Very hard to do. This is the best link I can offer to get you started. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/d/di/dice.htm
I have made wooden and brass dice, was interesting but results were not great.
If you’re doing a six sided die, remember the number of dots on opposite sides of the cube must add up to seven.
Well, you can’t make them the way the D&D dice are made. The unusual D&D dice - twelve-sided, 20-sided - are made through injection moulding. Injection moulding is not something you can do in your spare bedroom; it’s an industrial undertaking.
Your best bet is probably to form dice out of wood. Frankly, it won’t be easy to get the sides even - I suspect, to be honest, that it will be impossible for any die with more than six sides.
To make accurate dice you will nwws a milling machine, and one or more dividing heads to hold and rotate the die stock material.
In addition you will have to acquire the necessary skill(s) to operate the machines.
A good knowledge of geometry and mathematics would be an asset. Then you can make your own dice in all of the regular geometiric solids! 
Are there analogous rules for 12-sided, 20-sided, etc. dice?
With d20’s, at least, the opposite ends add up to 21. d12’s are probably 13, but I don’t have one in front of me. d10’s and d8’s don’t really have “opposite ends”.
I grant your point, but if there’s a flat side up, there must be a flat side on the table – hence “opposite ends.”
A d4, on the other hand, really doesn’t have an opposite end. And a d2511619 of course has hyperspatial circuits that all add up to prime numbers.
I think that he’s only talking about casino dice. D&D dice are very different. Dice for D&D and other RPGs are generally made of plastic, yes, but some are made of wood, metal, or even semiprecious gems. My daughter, for instance, has a set of dice made of lapis lazuli. While they’re very pretty, they don’t roll better numbers than my set of plastic dice.
Back when I lived in Las Vegas, casinos often had vending machines that dispensed used casino dice and cards. The cards generally had a hole punched in them, or a corner cut, or some other way of showing that they were retired from the casino (to prevent the old ace up the sleeve trick). I never noticed whether the dice had any such markings. I rather suspect that they didn’t, as I purchased and used several pair of them.
Thanks for the replies! I guess it is pretty darn hard to make dice in any medium. It’s too bad because I think I could dream up some pretty cool looking dice such as using color gradients or the powdered silver effects that some glass pipe makers use.
You won’t be able to hold them in your hand or put them in your pocket, but my I suggest POV-Ray:
Make paper models, papermache painted with acrylics, poly clay, or any other artists’ medium, and decorate and embelish to suit yourself.
Poly-clay is quite versatile and adaptable.
There are no limits!
6-siders out of wood are real easy. I’ve made a bunch of them for teaching games, using a 2" x 2" rod cut up into 2 inch long sections, and they’re quite durable (if you use them outside, like I do, you’ll want to shellack them so water doesn’t soak 'em).
Other types like 10-siders or 12-siders I guess would be much more difficult.
What kind of checks do you make that use a d2511619? Epic level spells?
I have a nice set of Efron’s Dice in my office that I made from Cocobolo wood. The wood is very dense and machines like a harder material. I simply used jigs on my tablesaw to get the dimension just right, sanded them extra carefully, and then used a jig on my drill press to get the dots right.
Efron’s dice are cool because they are non-transitive: A beats B, B beats C, and C beats D, but the apparently weakest die, D, beats A. This means, of the four dice, no matter which one you select, I can always select one that will win 2/3 of the time against your die. Very cool.