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How lomg does it usually take to build a tower?

When I was a beginning builder, it only took me about 4 hours total, but my main goal was to build a tower that would make specs, rather than one that would be competitive. Now my team makes pretty competitive towers at the state level, and it takes me about 8-10 hours spread over 3-4 days to build one for a tournament. I find that as the season goes on and the more advance you get, the build time decreases, but the amount of time one spend thinking about the design and technique increases a lot.

Actually, once you get to about 25 towers, it takes about 2.5-3 hours for the whole thing.

I've been building towers for about one and a half years and it still takes me around 20 hours including weighing the balsa wood

If you have a patient hand, even after only having built 3 towers like me, you can finish your tower within maybe 4-6 hours at one sitting or if fragmented (finish two sides of the base, then go on a tangent, then finish the base, go on a tangent, finish two sides of the chimney, go on a tangent, finish the chimney, go on a tangent, connect the base and chimney, go on a tangent, and then finish the tower with final alterations and adjustments) it should take you about 2-4 hours. No joke, I built my state tower in a total of 1:45 minutes and it was the most accurate and the best tower I had (until the comp. when it failed early due to one piece becoming unglued! Make sure all pieces are glued before checkin! I checked at my homeroom and it was fine but during transport to the testing room, one became unglued and I did not notice until checkin when it was way too late to fix even though I had my glue!)

I take about 1.5-2 hours building mine. However, I don't use a jig, but I have a 2D drawing on a piece of paper, glue two sides of the base, connect them, finish the bracing for the base, and do the same thing for the chimney. Usually, we can build 7 towers in a month.

It takes me 8 hours to make a tower with an efficiency of around 100

Fossil Freak 25 wrote:It takes me 8 hours to make a tower with an efficiency of around 100

Regional efficiency, states, or Nats?

nats

Fossil Freak 25 wrote:nats

That's pretty good. I'd say top 20 with that, maybe even top 15. I think winning div. B tower could hit an efficiency of 122-135. What people can do is amazing.
The highest nats efficiency i hit was ~84-85, of course, my highschool isn't that great and didn't make it to nats, not that we ever will, there's a lack of initiative :/