DIY Earth & Log Bunker

I split my painting time this week between painting miniatures and building terrain. I built an earth & log bunker for my 28mm WWII campaign. The bunker may look familiar to some of you, I took my inspiration from Mel the Terrain Tutor’s how-to video, though I made mine slightly larger.

I didn’t have the same materials to build mine as Mel did and I made mine slightly larger to accommodate a small artillery piece as well as a MG.

I started with a 9″x7″ piece of corrugated cardboard, glued on a piece of foam board cut to the same size & then blocks of 1″ thick foam. Once everything was dry, I cut the slopes & added spackling or dry wall compound. I also cut out a piece of foam board for the roof and covered it with spackling as well.

For the floor, you can use craft sticks, coffee stirrers, or in my case – corn dog sticks (the Floozy does enjoy corn dogs during the Summer). The logs were made from bamboo skewers I got at the grocery store. I sanded the spackling smooth & as a finishing touch, I made sand bags from Das modeling clay. Mel the Terrain Tutor also has a short tutorial on making sand bags.

I won’t bore you with the painting detail, as it is the same with just about everything made with foam :

• seal it with either Mod-Podge or PVA glue with black paint mixed in
• paint the earth brown, the flooring & logs with different shades of brown
• paint the sand bags with a light brown or kahki
• paint the floor, logs & sand bags with a brown wash
• highlight the logs with a dry brush of light brown or light gray

Then, it’s a matter of adding the flock & ground cover of choice (or what you have available in my case). Finally, seal it with a spray matte varnish or watered down PVA glue.

I showed it off to my son & his only comment was “Where’s the widescreen TV & mini-fridge?”