Request for advice: building castle walls

[maxxev]

Hi, I need a large number of castle walls (and towers), but space is an issue,

I'm trying to work out how to make walls that are stable and straight but able to be "flat-packed" to some degree.

I would like to use textured plastic-card for the face, I have a load of foamcore but would prefer to use something stronger (e.g. plastic card) for the main bulk of the walls.

Has anyone ever attempted or thought about how to do this or have any ideas?

Cheers.

[Billchuck]

What scale?  What is "a large number"?  How many feet of walls, how many towers?

My first idea is to make each wall with three pieces; front, top and one side.  One end has pegs that fit into holes on the other side.  When you fit them together the single side will support everything, but you can take it apart and nest all the wall sections together.  You will also need to make inside and outside corners for bends, and set up your towers with matching pins and holes.

Personally, I would just use blue foam and set things up so that you can fit it all in banker's boxes or something similar.  Wall section lengths equal to the width of the box interiors, etc.  You can fit a _lot_ in one of those boxes if you plan well, and they don't take up much room.

[zorg]

You could use a paper model. That's light-weight, many available sets can be stored flat, and it's reasonably sturdy. Plus, you can print as much as you need.

[maxxev]

Going to need about 16 feet of wall and at least 8 towers + 2 gatehouses, plus a couple of damaged walls. Walls need to be arrpox 50mm deep + crenelation.

[Oldben1]

Thin MDF could work well.  Plasticard sticks well and you can fill all the gaps with poly fill.  I've used it for brick walls and it dry brushes well too.  My Flickr site has a lot of examples.

[Jevenkah]

Teshub and I made wall segments and structures with 3 layers of thin foam. All together (including crenelations) the wall pieces are about 55mm thick.

First pic, to the left and right of the tower are arched gateways with removable card-and-balsa doors. Far right wall segment has decorative alcove archways cut through the inside layer of foam.

In the front left corner you can see the layers. In a typical set up a corner piece would cover that:


And in the box:




We made a gatehouse and other towers too, but they're taller and stored on a shelf I can't reach.

Jev

[sukhe_bator]

Like Billchuck said I managed to get all this (12 feet of wall sections 9" long with towers, bastions etc.) into only 8 photocopy paper boxes - all solid expanded poly covered with styrofoam. I don't think that's too bad!

[Eric the Shed]

Have you considered the GW Fortress - four towers and 4 walls (inc one with gate) - total strwetch around 6 foot

I have just bought two sets of these on ebay for my walled city -bids were about £40 each - £6.50/foot -

given the cost of materials and time I thought this worked out quite well

Eric

[maxxev]

Due to the extra gates I would need approx 5 boxes of the Warhammer fortress and it takes up a TON of space.
 
What I have in mind (untested) should take up one box, at the most.

It involves flat-packable walls and Towers of a couple of sizes (That can fit inside each other).

When I eventually get around to it i'll post some shots.

Space (and the fact that I will need to transport it) is far more of an issue for me than money at the moment.

[Faust23]

We made our own for our Epic Heroes board.  You can see the progress shots here http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=48872.105

We used foamcore and covered it in Elmer's Woodfiller.  Drew hand placed each tiny square tile for the top, as we wanted a decent sized thickness to the wall and the unevening of the surface over a few hundred years.

I then sanded it with a sanding block by hand, sprayed it brown, then dry brushed up the color.  Then Drew & I added the foliage/turf cover.

We also drilled 6 holes into the table top and into the bottom interior foam and used 1/2 dowel to act as vertical anchors that would keep the wall stable if bumped.  We could remove the dowels for transport.