Tuesday - Tank Traps

One of the things I decided to make and sell at the Lincombe Barne Wargamers Table Top Sale in Bristol on Sunday, was a Tank Trap area of terrain. I've seen these made by a number of manufacturers and seen 'how-to' articles that describe how to make them. The results are generally mixed, with some looking amazing and some looking pretty shoddy. I thought I'd give it a go and see how I got on. The first stage was to find some inspiration, after a few minutes flicking around on the internet I found this picture which really struck me.
The traps are quite simple, but also have a bit of character in the shape of the top, allowing troops to use them as cover and fire through the hole, very similar to medieval crenelations.

I decided the best way to make these would be to make a couple of master models and cast moulds which could then be used to make plaster traps.

The master were made from layers of foamcard stuck together, cut to shape and then coated with thin layers of plaster to hide the joins. The bases were made using strips of plasticard with small sections of plasticard rods pushed through (carefully drilled) holes to represent rivets. The master are shown below:
The moulds were then cast, using the method I've mentioned in previous posts, and then I could start casting plaster models, shown below:
I'm really happy with how the traps came out, the detail of the rivets was still obvious and the plaster coating on the foamcard gave it a rough concrete look.

All I had to do then was make dozens and dozens of casts! This took a few days and involved me pouring plaster into moulds every time I had a spare five minutes and then drying the casts out in the oven after every meal!


Eventually they were all done and it was just a case of hot-gluing them to MDF bases, adding plaster and sand to texture and then painting them up. I've just finished all the drybrushing, all I need to do now is add a little flock and pick out some of the details. As always, you can click on the photo for a larger picture. Hope you like them!
That's all for today, see you again tomorrow!