A close friend recently called to ask me a woodworking question. That question was, “Do you think you could make me an oversized Jenga set?” To which I emphatically replied, “YES.”

This classic block stacking game consists of stacked blocks, arranged in crosshatched layers. Each players takes turns removing a block, and stacking it on the top of the tower. The person who makes it fall, loses. Many of the DIY Jumbo Jenga builds I saw online were simply store bought 2×4’s cut to length and that’s it. Seeing as this was for a good friend and I have a shop at my disposal, I decided to take it one step further.

I spent $16 on lumber from the local home supply store, plus $1 on a candy bar. Once I got to the shop, I cut down the 8-foot boards into 28 in. sections for ease of milling. I decided to have my final dimension be 1 1/4 in. thick by 3 in. wide, with 9 in. sections. After all was said and done, an hour milling and crosscutting left me with 54 of these pieces.

I then had the tedious task of chamfering all the edges, as straight off the machine the pieces were razor sharp. I decided to use the router table with a v-groove bit to save time versus hand planing. Once they were all chamferred, a quick sand with a block and they were ready to go.

Overall, the materials were cheap for this project, but it was heavy on the manual labor portion. It also gave me a chance to brush up on good milling practices and router table protocol.