Wooden Blocks: How-to

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As many of you know, we've been working on a homemade Christmas this year. I'll put a final update on all the projects that we did in a few days, but wanted to share one project with you now. We made a set of wooden blocks for my nephew, using only a few common household tools. The rest of this was written by Ben, the one who actually made the blocks! Enjoy the project!

The goal: To make a nice homemade gift for my 1-year-old nephew that will encourage his creative development, be something meaningful that will last, and be relatively cheap (materials wise, though certainly not time wise; after all, we are trying to get out of debt). The gift we chose was a nice set of wooden blocks, painted in Texas A&M Aggies colors (red and white) since that is his father's favorite football team.

The materials I used were some scrap pieces of 2x6 left over from some household repairs and a piece of 1" dowel rod. While the pieces I used were scrap, they were the perfect size and what I would have purchased, if needed. Buying the pieces new would probably cost $10-20 depending on the number blocks you'd like to end up with. Plan ahead and calculate the square area of all the pieces you want, and decide if you'll need an 8', 12', or 16' piece of 2x6. (Make sure you account for the width of the blade in your calculations!)

I ended up with a 35 piece set, which I felt was a good size, but maybe a little on the small side. A 40-50 piece set seems like a good number, although depending on either your skill level, or the amount you think your child (or gift recipient) would play with them, you may want a smaller or larger set.

This is a break down of all the pieces:

(cut from the 2x6)
2 - 2.25"x6.75" arches (with a triangle cut out of the bottom)
2 - small triangles from the arches above
8 - 2.25"x2.25" squares
4 - 4.5"x2.25" rectangles
2 - 2.25"x6.75" (cut diagonally) sloped triangle
8 - 2.25"x2.25" (cut diagonally) right triangle

(cut from a strip of 2x6, 3/8" thick)
5 - 4.5" flat pieces

(cut from 1" dowel rod)
2 - 6" columns
2 - 3" columns

I started by deciding what size pieces I wanted, and marking the wood before I cut it. (I've highlighted the pencil marks so that they can be more easily seen). NOTE: I am aware that not all the pieces are marked :0 I wanted to see how the sizes I decided on felt in my hands, before I marked all the other pieces.

(To help identify which pieces I'm referring to later in the post, on the left side, the top piece is two arches, then 4 squares, 2 sloped triangles, 6 flat pieces, then finally the dowel rod)

Most of the cuts should be done with a single or double bevel miter saw (like the one shown below). The remaining can be done with a basic hand held circular saw. We didn't have a miter saw when we did this so we used a circular saw for most. It is doable but not as easy. Bekah LOVED this project, by the way; she was constantly signing "more" when the saw stopped and bringing over new pieces of wood and saying "cut please."

Start by cutting the 2x6 length wise twice, with the circular saw, into two strips 2.25" (cut on the blue lines). This will leave you with two pieces 2.25" wide and a piece about 5/8" wide (5.5" originally, minus 2.25", 1/8" cut, 2.25", second 1/8" cut). To make it simpler later, trim 1/4" off the bottom of the piece, so that you're left with a 3/8" piece, instead of a 5/8" wide piece.

The diagram below shows all of the respective pieces that will be explained in the following paragraph.

Then use the miter saw to "chop" the 2.25" pieces of 2x6 into the right sizes; 2.25" wide for squares, 4.5" wide for rectangles, 6.75" for arches, 6.75" for sloped triangles, and 2.25" for right triangles. The dowel rod can also be chopped at this point into 6" and 3" long pieces.

Whether you have a single bevel or double bevel miter saw, you can now set it at 45 degrees to cut some of the 2.25"x2.25" squares in half diagonally to turn them into right triangles. The miter can also be used at this point to cut the under side of the arches. It would be best to use a rotary saw, but since I don't have one, I used my miter saw. I started the arch about 1.5" from the ends of the piece and used a triangle to mark the cuts.

For the sloped triangles, cut the 2.25"x6.75" piece diagonally with the circular saw.

The last pieces I cut were using the 5/8" wide scrap we left earlier. I trimmed it down, using a length wise cut with the circular saw, to 3/8" wide. As I noted earlier, the best idea is to trim this piece before cutting the 2.25" pieces, so that you can set your circular saw squarely on the larger piece. I chopped this into 4.5" long flat pieces to act as a floor or roof piece.

Once you're cut out all of the desired pieces, we need to make the wood pieces safe for kids to play with. I used a hand held sander to sand every edge, and every surface, of each piece, to remove all rough spots in the wood and the sharp edges.


Once I was done with all the cutting and sanding I let Rebekah "play test" the pieces to ensure that they were in fact, fun to play with. She certainly thought so :0


Finally, the wood should be either painted or covered with a vanish to help protect the wood. Dark, semi gloss, "kid safe" paint (very important that it's kid safe) looked very nice, and a clear vanish will help it look more "old fashioned", if that is more your style. It will probably require at least two coats of a dark paint, and 4-5 of a lighter one since the wood will soak it up a little.


In all, it took about 6 hours to measure, cut, sand, and paint all of the pieces. We gave it to our nephew last weekend when we had our family Christmas and he certainly seemed enthralled by the blocks. He must have played with them for over an hour while the rest of us opened our gifts.

With the average child under two watching over 2 hours of TV per day, isn't it better to give them a constructive, fun, toy that will help build their minds instead of turning them into mush? As a child, I played with LEGOs for hours and hours, and still do since Kate got me a LEGO Darth Vader set for Christmas :0 Is it any wonder that I became an engineer? From childhood, I've wired my brain into figuring out how pieces and parts go together, how to replicate a real world object, how to analyze a random collection of objects and build something constructive with it. I may use computer code now, but those problem solving principles are still the same.

Do you like working on wooden projects? Do your children have wooden blocks or other fun, brain-building toys? Which are their favorite?

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