I am making a tiki god cake this weekend and the lady wants it 12" tall like a real tiki god, so I thought of using 3 10" cakes double layered each with cake boards and dowels in between each layer with one dowel the center of the whole cake. Does this sound right? Also if it is not 12" tall could I use a Styrofoam base at the bottom as I cannot find a dummy base and frost that with the cake to look like one tall cake. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated, I will be using BC not fondant as that is what the customer wants and she wants all yellow cake with Chocolate BC frosting. Thanks again.

I just made a 16" tall beer can cake and built the support just like you suggested. I used 4 - 4" cakes and between each layer I put a mortar board (covered in saran wrap & aluminum foil) and used plastic dowels. I used a piece of 1/2" PVC piping for the main support in the middle and had it go into a gasket on the bottom of the main board. It was extremely heavy!!! So make sure you have it on a sturdy bottom board. I used plywood as the base and just covered it with foil then a mortar board covered in fondant for the cake to sit on. We transported in a plastic bin with a non-slip liner so it could be slid across the floor and only carried up and down steps and into the car.

thank you, so do u think I will need the pvc piping down the middle of my 12" cake or would a couple long dowels down the whole cake work ok?

Someone made one like that:
http://cakecentral.com/cake-photo_949083.html

She said it was really heavy even with the top being rice krispies.

You might need to get the support attached to the main board. Something like what you see here:
http://jessicakesblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/princess-dress-form-cake.html

I was hoping I wouldn't have to use anything but cake borads and dowels and one long one down the middle. I will try to post a pic of the cake she wants it was here on cakecentral, I don't know if that one was 12" tall but that's about as tall as she wants, the cake was mad by BeeBoos-8599_

I don't know why I can't attach it but it is under "tiki" search and is called Tiki God Luau Cake made by BeeBoos-8599_

I don't know about attaching, but this is the link?

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1438021

This one looks about half the height of the other one. Maybe you can PM the people who made these and ask them how tall they were? And what they used to support them? Maybe they'll answer you, as everyone is very nice around here and ready to help. They're probably just not reading the forum or maybe they're busy.

I did the center pipe just for added support and cut the center hole out of the boards I used under each tier. Last thing I wanted was for the whole cake to shift during transport!