We got to spend some time down at the beach yesterday, and built this sandcastle. We’re definitely amatuers (the experts can make some really beautiful pieces), but we certainly had fun making it!
Just learning the pancake method goes a long way for leveling up your sandcastle building game. The best tool most casual sandcastle builders don’t bring is a five-gallon bucket. Our castle started with a giant pile of sand, thanks to a real metal and wooden shovel, and a lot of digging. A real shovel is much more effective at moving sand than plastic tools, though it may destroy your shovel’s finish. Alongside the shoveling were many trips carrying five-gallon buckets full of ocean water to dump on the sand pile to give it more strength. When the sandpile was sufficiently large, we used the pancake method (here again the five-gallon bucket really shines) to build up locations where we wanted structures, then we carved these into the towers we wanted with a variety of carving tools.
This castle was all about 7:
- 7 sides on the central tower
- 7 central arches
- 7 towers around the outside
- 7 sides on each of those towers
- 7 layers
It was fun watching the tide take it back down as well!
