Making a Palisade defence tower by Corsair

Time to make: 2 days, taking into consideration time for glue and paints to dry.

Difficulty Level: Easy (2/5)

Materials:

Bamboo skewers
Foamboard
Balsa wood strips (optional)
Cardboard (optional for base)



Tools:

Cutting tool
scissors
PVA glue
sandpaper (to round the base)

Paints
(Paints you see fit to paint wood)
I used:
-Scorched Brown
-Dark Flesh
-Terracotta
-Tanned Flesh
-Chaos Black

step 1:Base and platforms

cut the foamboard into 2 x 60mm squares. One of the 2 squares can be glued with PVA onto the base:




step 2:Palisade walls

I got the skewers in groups of 5, and taped them with a 'point pattern on the top'. The tape isn't permanant, it just holds it in place while you make sure everything fits and whilst the PVA dries later on. You will need enough of these to go the whole way around. I can snuggly fit 3 per side of the square. meaning i had to make 12 of these:



step 3: 'Digging the trench'

In order to get the palisade walls to fit in without wobbling, i dug out trenches for them to fit in as you can see. Its worth trying to put the walls in to make sure they fit:



step 4: gluing the palisade walls

You will now need to run pva between the skewers while taped, i put PVA on BOTH sides to ensure they stuck together, once dried i removed the tape:



step 5: assembling the palisade

Once dried, i glued the palisade points into the trenches. I ran glue between the 3 palisade parts per edge to glue it all together:




step 6: The corner parts

for the corners, i just put 3 slightly taller poles, representing structural beams rather than defence features. Once again, i gave it a good generous coat of PVA to ensure it got well stuck together:



step 6: The platform

When the 1st 2 sides are done, it gave me enough space to fit the platform in, i used PVA to get it to stay. Make sure the platform is flat and level all the way around.



step 7: Completing the palisade tower

Once the platform had dried, i glued the next 2 sides and 3 corner poles in:



Step 8: The Access Ladder

I glued 2 balsa strips onto the palisade wall, then put 2 skewer 'bars' running down the edges of the balsa:



Then you can add the footing bars going across:



Step 9: Painting and basing the Tower

Once everything has dried thoroughly, you can sand, flock and paint the mini and base!!!

Use what paints you see fit for wood, earth and metal if yours had metal brace supports.

My finished tower:




Hope this has inspired you to make your own defence palisade tower and i look foward to seeing yours soon!

thanks

Corsair

This is made of awesome, seriously! I'm gonna have to give this a go a some point - cheers for the great tutorial!

Great article James! I'll update the latest tutorial box Friday or tomorrow and you have some points coming your way.

Thanks both of you!!!!

EDIT, i realised i forgot to add the 'finished works' photos.

Corsair

Fantastic. Way better than my tower that is something that looks like a 40K tower with cork board around it and a Warhammer door(From who knows where) as the mian door.
I've used it alot for special battles.

Nice work - keep it up

Very nice tutorial, I am so going to try this one, Great job!

Thanks for the tutorial Corsair!

I'll give this one a try.