Very slope-intensive tower technique by dmac

Post by **Bruce N H** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:17 pm

Hey all,

This would take like a gazillion slopes, but dmac has an interesting rounded tower technique:

Looks like he's using it for a Star Wars MOC (that imperial base on Endor, I think), but it could equally well be a rounded castle tower.

Bruce

shmails · Post by **shmails** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:33 pm

It looks very cool! I would love to see the final product of the entire wall. I tried this once to make an outfield wall for a baseball field, but it failed miserably, or at least I did.

wunztwice · Post by **wunztwice** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:49 pm

Hrm. I wonder if the tower could be reduced in size to help with the parts-intensity. This is an excellent idea, however, and I'll certainly be keeping it in mind.

puddleglum · Post by **puddleglum** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:55 pm

That looks great. It's funny, just the other day I put those five slopes together and thought about how they could make a nice round tunnel, but I never thought of turning them on their side to make a pillar/tower!

It would use a lot of slopes, but compared to the alternating 1x3 brick 1x2 tube technique, this actually looks like it requires a much smaller number of parts.

Post by **Bruce N H** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:55 pm

I think that if it was reduced in size you'd lose the rounded effect and would end up with more of an octagonal tower.

Bruce

draugaer · Post by **draugaer** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:15 pm

cool technique, it is very parts intensive though, I doubt anyone could realistically use this to build a tall, mini-fig scale tower.

However I could see the usefulness of this if you're building a round or curved structure in micro-scale. You could also use this to make a barrel vault.

puddleglum · Post by **puddleglum** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:05 pm

I don't think it's that impractical. Of the five slopes used to make this, 3 of them can be had in large quantities on BL for under $ .07 per brick, and the other two are around $.13. 60 of each of those five slopes would be enough to build a tower 30 studs (brick widths) high, 3x the height of the pictured prototype. Total cost for the bricks would probably be something like $25 not counting shipping.

That being said, it seems like it would be quite a challenge to integrate any kind of windows or other architectural details using this technique. But that's going to be true for any lego design involving round shapes.