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    Sandcastles Made Simple: Step-by-Step Instructions, Tips, and Tricks for Building Sensational Sand Creations
    Sandcastles Made Simple: Step-by-Step Instructions, Tips, and Tricks for Building Sensational Sand Creations
    Sandcastles Made Simple: Step-by-Step Instructions, Tips, and Tricks for Building Sensational Sand Creations
    Ebook275 pages1 hour

    Sandcastles Made Simple: Step-by-Step Instructions, Tips, and Tricks for Building Sensational Sand Creations

    By Lucinda Wierenga

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    About this ebook

    A step-by-step guide to building elaborate and impressive sandcastles with a basic understanding of sand and a few simple tools.

    A crenellated turret here, a winding, arched staircase there, maybe even a giant turtle—fairy tale ideas are at the heart of every sandcastle. Summer after summer, children and adults alike make valiant efforts to infuse their sandy structures with such inspiration, but the results are generally disappointing. With Sandcastles Made Simple, Lucinda “sandy feet” Wierenga, a renowned sand sculptor, puts a permanent end to less-than-perfect beach creations. She provides the ultimate step-by-step guide to building impressive sandcastles, and shows that with a few simple tools and a basic understanding of sand, building dream castles can be easy.

    The book features instructions for each of the architectural elements—base, staircase, roof, balcony, and more—that can be combined to fashion one-of-a-kind castles. Also included are two projects designed specifically for younger children. Like a shovel and pail, Sandcastles Made Simple is an on-the-beach necessity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherABRAMS
    Release dateMar 15, 2019
    ISBN9781683357261
    Sandcastles Made Simple: Step-by-Step Instructions, Tips, and Tricks for Building Sensational Sand Creations

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    • 4/5
      I Love Sandcastles. This has given me some great techniques to try out next time I'm on the beach! Clear instructions and great pictures.
    • 4/5
      Does what it says on the tin. You want to build sandcastles, but don't know the patented technique of jiggling a double-scoop of saturated sand to make a foundation pancake? You will fail: the sand will kick sand in your face. You need to own this book, or at least read the crucial couple of pages in the bookshop and then look at websites.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful book to take to the beach. Great illustrations of sandcastles. A few good ideas "incorporating characters in your castle, Bas relieve carving,Tools. The sea will carry them away, but your photographs like these will last for generations.

    Book preview

    Sandcastles Made Simple - Lucinda Wierenga

    Part 1

    THE BASICS

    An Overview, a Checklist, and Just a Smidgen of Physics

    1 * Background on Sand, Sand-sculpting Methods, and Sand-sculpting Tools

    You can and should take this book with you to the beach so you can refer to the photos and step-by-step instructions as you create your works of art. Before you head out, though, there are a few things you need to know about the medium and the tools of the craft.

    The basic premise of sandcastle building and sand sculpting is simple: Get very, very wet sand, form it into some sort of overall shape, and then—like a sculptor hewing a figure out of marble or whittling a figurine out of wood—carve the sand into a recognizable form. A castle, perhaps, or a turtle or a person or anything else your imagination leads you to create.

    Before we begin, let’s talk a little about some of the principles you need to understand, and a few basic tools you need to have on hand.

    Basic Stuff You Need

    The list of ingredients for creating a simple sandcastle is misleadingly short: sand, water, and a few digging and carving tools. Let’s look a bit more closely at these items before proceeding.

    SAND

    This may seem a bit obvious, but one woman’s sand is another man’s gravel. Generally speaking, fine, flat-grained, unwashed sand is better than the alternatives. If you are at a beach, you don’t have a lot of choice here, but this info can help when you are looking for sandbox material from a commercial sandlot.

    The first and most important thing you need to know about sand is that you can’t do a thing with it unless it’s wet. Here’s why. When you add water to grains of sand, the liquid forms bridges that connect the granules to one another. This is why damp sand sticks together so you can form and carve it.

    If you add a lot of water, the grains of sand move apart, stretching the connecting liquid structures between them to the breaking point. Then, as gravity settles out the excess water, the bridges re-form into shorter, stronger connectors.

    Pounding or tamping down wet sand drains more water more quickly to create even shorter bridges and an even more solid clump. Sand that has been compacted in this way can be subjected to extreme carving, like undercuts and cut-throughs. (See more on this in chapter 8.)

    Keep in mind that all sand is not created equal. As I mentioned above, fine, flat-grained sand with plenty of silt is the best material for creating big, beautiful sandcastles. You are most likely to find this kind of good sand all along the Gulf Coast, though the colors will vary greatly. (For example, Texas sand is brown and can have a grayish cast, while the sand along the Florida coast is much whiter. Both, however, have a high natural clay content and make for excellent sand-sculpting material.) The sand on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts can really be a mixed bag, with beaches that are practically adjacent to one another offering up very different types. To further complicate things, some communities renourish their beaches with sand from elsewhere. (In a perfect world, communities that need to supplement their beaches with imported sand would choose the kind that is good for sandcastling. Sadly, this is not usually the case.)

    Lake sand can also be either good or bad for sandcastle building. The shores of Lake Michigan, where I grew up, are covered with sand that will only hand-stack a foot or so in height before one side slides, though we have built some fairly impressive castles by starting with flexible forms pounded really hard. (See more on this in chapter 5.)

    River sand is often very good for sandcastle building, as it usually has a high clay or silt content. It can also be very lumpy, though, with a high concentration of rocks, twigs, and nuggets of clay. Sand that has a lot of chunks in it can still work fine if you are carving on a large scale or are willing to do some sifting (we use hardware cloth stretched between four two-by-fours). It may be impractical to sift all the sand you use in your creation, but it may not be too much extra work to sift enough for the areas that require fine detail.

    If you find yourself on a beach that only offers large-grained, silt-free sand, try snooping around the neighborhood a little. With a bit of investigation, you may discover patches of sand that are finer or siltier than the general beach surface. Compare the sand that’s right where the water washes up to the sand that’s farther away from the shore; it is often better for sandcastle building. Coves, estuaries, and areas where streams or rivers meet the sea or lake are often the kinds of places where you will find silt deposits.

    SANDBOX SAND

    If you go to a home improvement store to buy sand for your sandbox, they will try to sell you big bags of play sand. This will likely turn out to be what is often called silica sand. It will be very fine, very white, very clean, very pretty, and totally unsuitable for almost any kind of sand sculpting, as it has almost no clay content. You can, however, improve it by infusing it with clay. Keep reading for tips on how to do just that.

    The best place to purchase sand for a sandbox is a commercial sandlot. Sand is heavy and thus expensive to ship, but it is used for a variety of purposes in multiple industries, so sandlots are fairly common throughout the country. Most of them offer a variety of sand and sandlike substances to choose from, most of which have been blessed with descriptive names. However, I have found that the really nice stuff some sandlots call masonry sand often bears no resemblance to the gravel-like stuff that goes by the same name in another part of the country. In some parts of the world you can find something called racetrack sand—this is (generally speaking) very good sandcastle-building sand. Washed refers to sand that has had the silt removed (not good). And if river sand is an option, it is likely to be your best bet.

    If you are serious about getting the best sand available for your sandbox (and you really should be as it will be a giant pain to change if you get the wrong stuff), don’t take the word of the guy at the sandlot, because more than likely he doesn’t have a clue. Go see what they have for yourself—and be sure to bring a bucket of water. Sand with a high clay content will hold the water longer and drain more slowly. Try thrusting a handful of moist sand into the bucket of water and see if you can make a sandball out of it. (See chapter 10 for more on sandballs.) If you can, you probably have found the right stuff.

    ADDING CLAY WILL IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF ANY SAND

    Almost all sand has some level of natural clay or silt (also known as sticky stuff). When you add clay, you are not cheating (unless, of course, you are in a contest situation where everyone is expected to use the same building material) and—especially when you are using the hand-stack method (see chapter 4)—it is a fairly simple process to raise the level of silt content in the sand. Before I go further, I should note that some beaches have strict rules about introducing foreign substances into the sand. Even though we are not talking about huge amounts and clay is a natural, nontoxic substance, you should make sure that you are not breaking any laws before you try adding clay to beach sand. What you do in your backyard sandbox is, of course, nobody else’s business.

    Dried clay is easiest to work with. You can find reasonably priced bags of powdered clay at ceramic supply stores. It is heavy and expensive to ship, so you will want to try and find it locally.

    To make sure the clay is distributed evenly throughout the sand—and avoid unsightly clumps in your sculptures—add the clay to the water you use to build instead of mixing it directly with the sand. The recipes that follow are not exact; I never measure and have no scientific formula, and even if I did it would apply only to my home beach. As you work with the stuff, you will get a better feel for how much is too much, not enough, or just right. Sand with a lot of clay in it takes longer to drain, so if you find yourself having to work very slowly, you probably are going too heavy on the clay. If the water drains through the hand-stack patty so fast that you don’t have time to help it spread and settle,

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