Hi everyone

I was busy for the last few weeks and didn't visit this place at all. Fortunatelly I have some spare time now and can start to work on my latest medieval tower project. Some of you might remember my old tower that was made out of dental plaster and had the stones carved out using a dental tool. It looked fine, but not too realistic as the walls were way to "flat". So I've decided to create a new one using some homemade stones. I've created a lot of stones and a fairly big mold which gives 117 different looking pieces in one cast (each stone is around 6,5mm high), you can see it here:



After a lot of casting I started casting and glueing and created this:



Almost half of the lower part is finished. The core of this tower is made from 0,5cm foamboard. You can also see graph paper under the stones, which is used to keep everything parallel. I will add some small arrow slits in the upper part of the lower piece (one slit on each side). The finished piece will be around 20cm high (it has a square 10cm base) and works with 35mm scale (1:54).

Personally I think that the result is very nice, plus you can create almost everything with individual stones: brigdes, walls, ruins, houses etc.

What do you think?? Does it look realistic? Any suggestions / comments / criticism is more than welcome. Thanks in advance for your replies,

cheers,
dsc.

very nice results i liek it. as far as it being realistic, i never visited a castle so i wouldnt be able to tell

cant wait to see it finished tho.
Frank

This is looking very, very good. I would be interested to find out how you made the stones that were used to make the mold. It looks very realistic.

What are you using to glue the stones together? Also, is the foam board backing going to be part of the tower or are you just using it to help the stones stay in place while the glue sets?

Me To this build looks quality cant wait for the finished model

redleg

It looks good, but I think the stones maybe are lined up a bit to rough. The textture of the stones looks really good though.

Hi,

At first i thought that the stones are a bit to high. This is because your door is relatively small, it's only 4,5 cm, so less than a 1/35 figur.
The overall look of your tower so far is excellent and promising and after a quick googling for "medieval towers" i think that nearly every stone pattern is allowed, also i prefer smaller irregular stones.
Maybe you can add a row of stones at the bottom to adjust the doors height ?

I also am interested in your original stone casting, and how much Silicon you needed for the mould ?

Cheers,
Claude

First of all thanks for the replies:)

@Marty: if you want to make individual stones you need to make sure that their hight is almost equal. I used lego pieces to make a medium sized "hard" mold to cast some longer pieces which were then cut to the right size (I've decided to cut it into different width pieces). After that you just need to add some texture and you are done.
I'm using PVA glue to put everything together and the foamboard box is there to provide a frame, the pieces are glued to it, so it's a part of the whole building.

@Norseman: the maximum depth difference is around 1mm, so in 35mm scale it would mean a difference of around 5cm "in reality" (assuming that an average man is 180cm high), so I guess it's not that bad.

@Claude: this tower isn't suppose to be in 1:35 scale, it's meant to be used with "35mm" scale figures which is 1:54. So if the doorway hight is around 4,3cm it means that it would have around 230cm in reality. I'm planing to add a doorsill which will be 3mm high, so the doorway will be 4cm high (which gives around 210cm in reality). I guess that everything is right. The stones are already only 0,65cm high, so using anything smaller would mean a real nightmare when building even the smallest building:)
As for the mold I used around 400ml of RTV rubber.

Stay tuned for more photos soon,

cheers,
dsc.

Tom...i think it looks fantastic so far. I for one can't wait to see the finished piece. If you have any extra blocks to get rid of ....send them my way..lol..

Mary

Very nice indeed! What do you use to cast your "stones?" Resin, plaster.... I think I will have to try this method

oops,

35 mm and 1/54, should have read better , so you have green light from me also.

Cheers and happy weekend
Claude

@Mary: thanks a lot for your kind words:) I have some spare stones but I guess that:
a) they're far from being perfect, so you have to be careful when glueing everything together
b) the shipping cost would be far greater than the cost of all the stones:)

@Douglas: I'm using dental plaster. It's easier to cut and shape than resin.

@Claude: thanks for the green light:)

cheers,
dsc.