Free water tower SVG files

The tower every town puts its name on

A water tower is the tallest thing in most small towns, and the name painted on the tank is why people want one as a cut file. So the tanks here are blank. On the water tower with a blank tank the clear band is about 55 mm wide and 15 mm tall when the tower is 100 mm tall: type the name of the town in your cutting software and cut it out of the band, or cut it from a second colour and lay it on.

The legs are the fine part. At 100 mm tall the two raking legs are about 3.4 mm wide, the riser pipe 6 mm, and the tie rods crossed between them 2 mm. The railing round the walkway has posts and a top rail a little under 2 mm wide. That cuts cleanly in vinyl from 90 mm and in card from 110 mm. For wood or steel go to 200 mm or more, or use the ball on a pedestal, which has nothing thin on it.

Four kinds of tower, and their neighbours

The steel tank on legs is the one from the plains and the Midwest. The ball on a pedestal is the modern suburban kind. The wooden tank on a steel frame is the one on the roofs of old city blocks, its staves held by iron hoops. The railroad tank fed steam engines through a spout that swung out over the track. The silos and the grain bin are here because on a real skyline they stand next to the water tower, and all of them share the same flat strip of ground.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions