My big castle project.

[Mechbuilds]

Hi guys! 

I'm planning on making a huge castle with my wife that'll be constructed on top of a table. 
Currently i have already designed a functional machicolation on top of my castle walls. 


Currently i'm trying to figure out a good gatehouse. 
I'll probably make two towers and have the gatehouse in between them. 

Any tips for a mechanism for a iron gate that'll go up and down? 
Behind that, i'll add two wooden doors. 

The castle will be in normal minfig scale. So it'll end up being quite large. 
I already made a sketch on LDD but the gatehouse was too tall. And the mechanism to lift the iron gate using chains needed a different mechanism so the crank would be behind the gatehouse instead of in the side. 
I need the crank to be built so it'll be unnoticeable. I'm trying to aim towards historical accuracy. 


I'll update this thread as our project goes. 


PS: 
The prototype of the wall is finished and i'll probably add pictures soon. 

[deraven]

Since you're going for historical accuracy, if you google for "portcullis mechanism" you'll get a lot of examples of the real-life workings, and most are surprisingly simple.  Just a couple pulleys, a winch, and some kind of clutch to it could be hoisted incrementally by just a couple of people.  It may not be that same mechanism, but you can look at how they did it in 7946 King's Castle for a pretty compact and workable design.

When you said that the crank needs to be behind the gatehouse and not on the side, are you meaning the mechanism itself or the HOG point where you the human can still easily operate it without it being obvious?

[Mechbuilds]

Yeah i mean the crank where the human turns it to lift and lower the gate. 
I guess i could do with a simple mechanism to lift the gate and then push a technic axle trough to lock the gate in place. 

So all i need is just this: 

https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-door-1-x-8-x-12-castle-gate-portcullis-89519

And a couple of these:

https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-brick-1-x-2-with-groove-4216

And i should have a gate after i add the lifter mechanism over it? 



EDIT:

I should probably buy a few castle sets to get started.. I literally just ordered some random gray bricks and threw something together. Basically starting completely from scratch. 

Edited June 2, 2018 by Mechbuilds

[Littleworlds]

I suggest to also mix colours and textures a little. Pure grey bricks can look quite bland, but giving the walls spots of tan, dark tan or greens (for moss) plus some snot-technique can really enhance a castle and give it personality.

A lot of castles were also not completely stone-built, but featured tudoring for many of its buildings (especially facing the inside courtyard). Palisades were also quite common, especially in the earlier centuries (lets say roughly around 1000 ad) and on smaller castles.

[deraven]

4 hours ago, Mechbuilds said:

And i should have a gate after i add the lifter mechanism over it?

Basically, yes, if you're not going to do something fancier and brick-built (but if that piece works with the size you need, I don't see why not).

Also, these might work better depending on how you're constructing it:

https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-brick-1-x-2-x-5-with-groove-88393

https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-brick-2-x-2-x-6-with-groove-6056

If the interior doesn't need to be terribly accurate, you could simply make the winches that pull the Lego chain or string vertical rather than horizontal and then just have an axel coming up through the top level of the gatehouse and connect to something inconspicuous, either part of the structure or a barrel of "supplies" if you have a battlement up there- something like that.  It also wouldn't be hard to just rig a couple gears to turn the winch and have the control wherever you want it.  Or, likewise, attach a motor and have the switch hidden somewhere.  Lots of fun options, really.  

[Grover]

I tried building portcullises with bricks, but they are not particularly stable (unless you like gluing your bricks).  The portcullises that came with the old castle sets weren't wide enough for me, but once the Rancour Pit came out:

https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Rancor-Pit-75005

it contained a new, larger portcullis, so I bought a bunch of those on BrickLink for my gatehouses.  I haven't checked lately, but they were less than $2 when I bought mine a year or two ago.  Pretty inexpensive for a portcullis in my opinion.

I made a functional portcullis that has to be winched up and has a quick release down, as the originals did, by tying a string to the portcullis, running it up through a single hole technic brick to guide it, then onto a technic axle that was connected to a large wheel.  You winch the portcullis up slowly by turning the wheel by hand, as was commonly done in the medieval period.  Then the portcullis is locked into the up position by putting a brick holding the large wheel in place.  This can be done by putting a technic pin in the wheel, or using a gear for the wheel.  I put a large 1x2x5 brick protruding down from the floor above into the gear, holding it in place.  When you want to drop the gate, simply lift the brick, and the portcullis falls.  I disguised my brick from above as part of a crenellation, so it belnded in.

You can see a prototype of the portcullis in place here:

I actually don't have any pics of the mechanism, and won't have access to my bricks until later in the summer, but would be happy to take a picture in July when I return if you are still interested.

[Mechbuilds]

Thanks for the tips! 

Here's an update of the progress so far:









It's just a prototype to highlight the machicolations. 
Due to lack of bricks, i had to improvise and build it all with those brick pieces.. The windows were there as fillers cause i ran out of parts. 

I need to order a massive massive pile of parts this month. 
Already doing prototypes on LDD. 


But yeah. Any tips for the walls? 
(I know the walls were completely solid and no pathways inside.) 
This prototype will be disassembled and the wall part itself will be redone. 

[MAB]

On 03/06/2018 at 8:01 AM, Mechbuilds said:

Due to lack of bricks, ...

But yeah. Any tips for the walls? 
 

 

Yeah, buy more bricks!

I'd stagger bricks if I were you, it makes the walls much stronger.

[Grover]

How big of a structure do you want?  For me, I wanted to build something big, so I tried several prototypes.  For my walls, I decided what height I wanted in real life (a 20' wall say) and then calculated based on the average height of a medieval male (5'8") relative to a Lego mini.  Based on that, 20' is about 16 bricks tall.  So, if you want a 10' wall, it's about 8 bricks.  Then things start to look proportional and you go from there.

One of the books I ordered that was helpful with thinking of variations on designs, etc. for me was this:

https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Fortress-Castles-Walled-Cities/dp/0306813580/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1528165510&sr=8-24&keywords=medieval+castle+book

As for the walls, it depends on what you're going for: windows, arrow loops, or other features.  Depending on what you're going for and how precise you want to be with the dimensions and proportions will depend on what you want to do.  Your machicolations look great!  The merlons look good for some periods and style of castle/fortress, but might not fit others, so it's kind of up to your style.  I built a prototype with a corner tower that was to scale for what I wanted, but it included much larger merlons with arrow loops in them:

Ultimately, I didn't like the large 1x arrow loops, so I scrapped the design and went a different direction, but this was why I was building a prototype.  Also didn't like the towers that much, so did something else there, too.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Grover
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