HowTo: Building a tower - Part 3

After building and painting the core for my tower, it is time to build the upper level of it. Somewhere the guards or other inhabitants must live.

First I built a core of styrofoam which diamater was a little bigger than the stone structure. Then I glued everything on the top of my stoneworks and let everything really dry. Meanwhile I sorted and cut my wooden "swizzle sticks" into the same length. You need more than you think, I had to borough some of my friend. Lucky enough you get them for free in every fast food restaurant. I used some clippers. The edges don't need to be plain and exact.

Cutting everything to length

Then I glued every single stick onte the styrofoam core. Just leave a little space between the sticks (1mm or so, you will see why). This took really long and needed patience because the glue needs some time to dry and until then this is a wobbly construction. After this was dry, I wanted to build a visible "underconstruction" on the lower side, but this was too much work. I just painted the styrofoam black and let it be. On the gaming table noone will notice this little cheat and I saved roughly two hours of work.

Finished woodwork

As everything was dry, I started cutting some structure into the sticks to strengthen the wooden look. Then I primed everything black and then gave everything a brown basecoat. After this was completely dry, I drybrushed the sticks until the wooden structure came out nicely. It took about four layers until I was satisfied. Since you left some space between the sticks (I hope you did!) the black/brown undercoat will be visible and give a nice shading and depth to the whole construction.

Detailview of the upper part

Upper part with some stoneworks

I wanted to build up the roof also, but my two cats had something different in mind and started rioting and raiding my workbench :-) Therefore this will be shown in the next part.

Hope you enjoyed it.

So long,
Paradox0n


P.S: As with my gaming board series I attach the links to all parts of the HowTo: Build a tower series on each part if you missed one:
HowTo: Building a tower - Part 1
HowTo: Building a tower - Part 2
HowTo: Building a tower - Part 3
HowTo: Building a tower - Part 4