Sand Castle 101

August 19, 2008 1:59 PM

Do you have any great hints for building great sandcastles?

Asking for a friend who is doing sand castle battle in an amateur contest at the beach this weekend. He's looking for sand/water recipes, inspirational design advice, and shortcuts to structural awesomeness.

posted by roofus to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (2 answers total)

Start by making a really big mound of really, really wet sand, packed very tightly. Carve your castle from the mound. If it crumbles, the sand should be wetter and packed tighter.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 2:26 PM on August 19, 2008

I've been to this this many times, and my observation is that regardless of feats of sand architecture, the ones that win are the ones that have a great, crowd-pleasing theme, and are just plain well sculpted. The more effort put into the creativity, even as far as practicing and going with sketches in hand, the better the result. Of course your sand can't be crumbling and breaking, but having features like towers and bridges seems less important than just doing good sculpting and having a nifty idea. Check out the galleries in my link for winning examples.
posted by Miko at 2:38 PM on August 19, 2008