Build a bigger bunker

Hi, I'm Pete, and I've been asked to contribute to this nifty blog. I have been fond for a fair few years of recycling bits and bobs to make terrain. I'm equally fond of vegan ice cream (since I'm a vegan), and I have loads of old containers littering the house. They're octagonal, so make good-looking bunkers, but smaller (or differently-shaped) ones work equally well. What I do is get the ice cream tub, cut a hole in its underside, and vision-slits in its sides, then knock up a door from some plasticard, and glue that on. I thicken up the walls with some foamcard secured with a hot glue gun, and make sure that the vision-slits go all the way through the wall. Then I apply a bit of diluted PVA glue, sprinkle sand over that, and let it dry. I apply another coat of diluted PVA glue so the sand doesn't fall off like the dandruff of someone who really needs a medicated shampoo, and when that's dry, I slap on the paint. Because it's mostly coated with sand, dry-brushing with successively lighter shades of grey (or other colours more suited to your gaming table) works brilliantly. You can set these things up so they have a massive vantage point from the front, all-round coverage, or strategic blind spots - whichever suits your style. Check out these pictures for an idea of what I mean.

Save those packing materials!

I'm always on the lookout for interesting packing materials, nicely shaped cans, boxes, decent corrugated card - anything that I might be able to use in one of my terrain projects!

This piece of packaging was the box that my old digital camera arrived in - to be honest, I think I was more excited about this than the camera itself!

The packaging is an eggbox-card shell, which you get all kinds of different electrical gadgets in. I've had this one nestled away with the idea of turning it into some Tatooine-esque post-apocalyptic shantytown buildings...

I separated the different sections of the cardboard with a craft knife and began to trim the edges to blend them better into MDF bases - I'll get 3 buildings out of this piece of packing material.

Before gluing the pieces to their separate bases/additional pieces, I used some junk materials (in this case, some polystyrene foam packing that I couldn't really use due to it's lack of durability, plus some scraps of foamboard) to add some sturdiness to the pieces, rather than having them hollow. As always with terrain, the hot glue gun is your friend!

Here's one of the pieces, combined with an old junked Rhino, various additions and some polyfilla (spackle for those in the US!) - these could work well in a lot of different urban environments - for example, as pre-fabricated dwellings.

If you have any more ideas for how any of these pieces could be used in terrain, please leave a comment!

tutorial: escape pods (courtesy of mik's minis)

in this tutorial Mik creates some crash landed escape pods out of pvc bits and toothpaste caps

part 1 (ideas/plan/build) & part 2 (finished)

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perfect use for any spare plumbing junk you may have, and an interesting new piece of junk - the toothpaste lid.

tutorial: pipeline (courtesy of hogs of war)

here the hogs of war create a section of pipeline using cut offs of pvc pipe.

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a great use for leftover junk from home reno projects to create some great looking terrain!

tutorial: storage tank (courtesy of hogs of war)

hogs of war weigh in with another excellent tutorial, this one turns a can of nuts into a storage tank - check it out; part one, part two.

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excellent use of junk for terrain!

tutorial: garbage bags (courtesy of eastern fringe)

screamingabdab from eastern fringe shows us a great use for garbage bags - making scale garbage bags!

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now that is terrain = junk!

tutorial: junk shop (courtesy of hogs of war)

the hogs of war have built an excellent junk shop from nothing but spare bits and corrugated cardboard.

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the simplest piece of junk turned terrain!

tutorial: craters (courtesy of hogs of war)

the hogs of war show us how to build craters from pie pans.

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a perfect example of junk turned terrain!

tutorial: shield generator (courtesy of cinders of war)

cinder opens our minds to uses for clear plastic food packaging.

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truly an excellent use of junk!

tutorial: industrial building (courtesy of adepticus prime)

cawshis shows us how to make an excellent industrial building out of cardboard packaging.

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with a lick of paint it will be unrecognizable as the junk it was!

tutorial: ork fort (courtesy of jimbo's workbench)

jimbo has a great tutorial about using a cd spindle to create an ork fort

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more great terrain from junk!

tutorial: eldar cityfight terrain (courtesy of corbania prime)

col corbane has posted an excellent tutorial on making eldar cityfight terrain.

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terrain from junk indeed!