My inspiration for scratch building a water tower came from reading, Chain of Command, At the Sharp End. page 12 describes the Terrain for a campaign, stating the presents of a water tower in the middle of a wheat field.
Hence I decided to add a water tower to my collection of buildings.
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| Completed Water tower |
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| Poster added for a bit of interest |
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| Water gauge is added next to the ladder on the water tank. |
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| The tower separates , accommodating a maximum of one Team. |
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HOW I MADE IT:
To make the tower I raided the recycling bin and salvaged 2 containers, one made from plastic, the other cardboard.
I reduced the height of both containers to 7cm with the use of box cutters.
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| Trimmed cardboard strips into strips of 4cm x 1cm to the simulate the metal plates surrounding the water tank. |
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Glue the cardboard strips in place with PVA glue.
I was fortunate to find an inverted lid which was fixed in place with super glue.
If you are unable to find such a lid, you can improvise by cutting a thick piece of cardboard and glue it in place about a cm above the lip of the on a normal lid creating a raised area.
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| This the lid for the bottom portion of the water tower. |
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| cut out the inner portion of the lid with hobby knife. |
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lid is super glued in place on top of the stone portion of the water tower and glued a single layer of cardboard strips just below the edge.
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| Used a hand grinder to etch details onto the plastic container. |
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| Drilled 2 holes thru the plastic lid to accommodate 2 water overflow tubes. |
Glued in place tubes and below is the view from the inside of the container.
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Based the tower on 15cm x 13cm MDF, the ladders where made with metal wire cut to size and fixed in place with a soldering iron.
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| Ladder glued in place. |
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| Primed with black undercoat. |
- I used Tamiya color Acrylic Paint XF-6 to carefully wet brush the exterior of the tank allowing the black primer to show through.
- For the stone portion of the building I use stone grey and highlighted with some ivory mixed in with stone grey. I then used different washes to stain individual stones.
- For the water I first painted PVA glue on the surface of the plastic to create a bit of a ripple. Once dry I use Vallejo Model colour Black Green to paint over the PVA, while still wet I mixed in a bit of Vallejo Model colour Iquai sand into the Black Green paint and painted the water close to the rim of the tank.
- I applied two coats of Tamiya X-22 to the surface of the water to a bit of a shine.
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| some images found on the web of water towers I used for inspiration. |
cheers John
