The Wizards Tower


In 1995 I built this Wizards Tower. Unlike most other projects on the buildings page, I built this tower out of card board, foam board, paper, wood, clay and sand. This is why this project weighs about 150 grams. It is still a project that gets positive comments when it’s on the gaming table. Actually this tower lead me to a much greater challenge. Building a castle with the same materials. A project that lasted throughout 1996 and 1997. More of that project will be added soon.


Click on the images to enlarge them:


I planned more than one tower but only finished one.
That is why I still have an example lying around that shows the basic structure of the building. The Tower measures 3.5 by 4 inch and is 17 inch high. The base is 5.5 by 5.5 inch. Costs of making this tower are very low. On the other hand the time invested in this project is considerable.

Some of the details:

The walls are built out of 3 mm foam board (1/8 inch thick), a toilet roll (obvious) and some thick paper. The foam board is very strong, easy to cut and with the help of some needles you can built the desired structure within half an hour. Underneath the toilet roll I glued ¾ of a cone rolled from a piece of paper.

When you finished building the tower as in the first picture on the top row. Take the piece of thick paper and cut a certain amount of small rectangular shapes. Cut a certain pattern for using around windows, arrow slits or ornaments. Glue them at random on the tower. When dry, take an old large brush and a jar of wood glue. Give it a nice coat of wood glue. When finished you take some earth, sand, gravel that you found in your neighbours driveway. Since you putted it in a box somewhere near the central house heating system, it’s completely dry. Throw this over the glued object and let it dry over night. You wipe the loose sand off, spray paint it in a dark colour an brush it in lighter tones. There is your stone tower of merely 150 grams.

The wooden balcony and roof support beams are all made out of small wooden beams. (from ship modelling) Using a bit wider beams for the main support and the smaller beams for the angled support. The planks were glued onto the side of the floor board and I used a tiny piece of wood horizontal on the inside to make it all a bit stronger. A raw umber color base paint, brushed with beige will do the trick.
The photo at the right hand side shows some details that dress up the tower. At the bottom of this page I will go in to that. One exception; The green piece of glass came from a home decoration shop. They sell these coloured stones for putting them into glass bowls with water and floating candles……..what ever!

That was the fast part but now the slow part. The inside pictures of the roof gives you an idea of how I made it. Even that is not that time consuming although a bit tricky since the round gap has to be exact in place. The tiles on the roof are all hand cut. First cutting strips of paper of about 1/5th of an inch thick. Cut the end round and at 1/3rd of an inch a straight cut. This goes on and on and on. Tile after tile, strip after strip. (Imagine a castle with a walkway all around, having a roof like that) You have a roof skeleton made out of foam board and card board. You glue a piece of paper on it and that’s the actual form of the roof. Now work your way from the bottom row up to the top row of the roof. Put glue on the roof there where the bottom row is coming. Take a needle and sting a tile to it, place it on the roof. The tile will stick on the roof so this goes fairly quick. The rhythm is sting, glue, sting, glue….. After the first row again some glue and overlap the 2nd row etc. etc. After this use rectangular pieces to make the top and corner sides. I warn every one it’s a lot of work but it looks great (That is, I’m satisfied with it). The turret roof goes the same way but I guess you.ve already seen that this is a lot more time consuming.

Finally some nice details:

Details make a difference so try to make some interesting additions that gives a building more atmosphere. Below are some photo’s of items and parts I added to make the tower look more interesting. Just stack some planks aside a building. People do stack things so it looks normal. I have some plastic heads of horses lying around since the angle of the wall matched the angle of the head, it became obvious that I had to use one.

The photo with the door is a special one. First of all the large stone in front with the wheel against it. I put some clay on that corner and it looks like the stone became part of the wall. The door is a resin cast that I must have bought on one of my many visits to fantasy fairs. This also goes for the resin hedge. Finally the lantern beside the door. I made this myself using paperclips! Look closely and you see that you can make this from paperclips. I used a tine piece of foam and cut the shape of the lantern. Then I glued metal pieces of the paperclip on it using tweezers. A bit aggressive glue ate some of the foam away suggesting it’s a broken old lantern.
Finally the flag. I used metal again but now from a metal tube. Tubes where they sell mayonnaise, mustard, or ketchup in. Cut them open and rub them smooth. Base them with acrylic paint and let your imagination do the rest. After finishing painting them you can bend them the way you like, suggesting wind is moving it. The knobs are needles and the chain is just a chain.

Guess this raps up the wizards tower. I hope you liked my “How I did this” story

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