How to Make a Big Wooden Toy Castle

Castle designs were usually quite simple.

Making toys is an enjoyable past time and truly gives a sense of accomplishment when you have the final product. The upside to making your own toys is that the design is totally in your own hands and you can make the model as far fetched as you can come up with. Making wooden toys and models from is surprisingly easy too. You only need a few tools and some basic equipment.

Things You'll Need

• Balsa wood sheets
• Balsa cement
• Handsaw
• Paint
• Pencil
• Paper
• Carving set or linoleum cutting set

Instructions

1. Design the castle on paper first. Decide every feature, whether you want it to have turrets or a lot of towers and how many gates and windows the buildings are meant to have. Despite Hollywood depictions, most European medieval castles had quite simple designs. They were usually only a tall square or rectangular building with surrounding walls. The complexity of the design, however, is limited only by your imagination and you can opt for the simplest or craziest design you want. The only difference will be the time spent making it.

2. Draw each component of the castle onto Balsa wood. A single wall of the castle would be considered one component and an adjacent wall would be another. For turrets, you do not need to draw out each individual turret but rather a whole line of turrets. Balsa wood is an excellent choice for model making as it is strong and light. Draw each part of the castle on the wooden Balsa board.

3. Cut out the castle designs. Use either a handsaw or a power jigsaw to do this. Be careful to follow the lines on the wood exactly so you don't needlessly cut away large chunks of the castle.

4. Paint and decorate each part of the model. You might want to paint the castle walls in a shade of gray and can add green for an ivy effect. Carve the surface of the wood to accentuate bricks or cracks in the wall. Linoleum cutting knives work well for this as they easily can carve neat shallow lines into wood surfaces.

5. Assemble the model with Balsa cement. You do not need to use a lot of this glue as Balsa is light and will stick together will even small amounts of glue.

References

• Sherwood Models: Adhesives
• Build Model Castles: Llanstephen Caslte
• Your Child Learns: Build a Medieval Castle