The Gee-Whiz idea I had a couple of weeks ago came when I got a new telephone headset. I struggled with getting the thing out of the plastic and pitched the packaging on my desk. A few moments later I looked at the pieces as I was discarding them and thought - "Hey, this would make a great bunker!"

I had some dental plaster laying around from a previous project and so mixed some up and poured it into my new mold. To get what was to be the front of the bunker taller, I had to elevate the top end of the plastic. I use Excalibur Dental Plaster which is a durable plaster/resin mix. It is heavy but stands up to handling far better than plaster of paris. My initial piece is shown below (total time to cast about 30 minutes including mixing the plaster.) I added the casting from the central slot to the top of the large area to make it look like more of a storage space.

As you can see, the thick part of the bunker is slanted quite a bit and the front is not very tall. I solved this dilemma by building up the sections of the bunker with Magic-Sculpt .This is a water-soluble resin which can be sanded and molds easily by hand. I had to resurrect the hardener as it has been sitting in my closet for around four years but it was easy to do with a small amount of water and hand massaging.

Before I got to that stage, however, I needed to have something to build it up on. I cut a piece of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF here in the US) and then beveled the edges with a rasp which I got from a DIY store. 

I have an electric sander I picked up from Harbor Freight for a good price but this does the same job with less mess (albeit more effort). The sander can get through a couple of projects before I have to changes the sanding pad. That involves a laborious task of disassembly and then stripping the pad off and cleaning off the adhesive backing from the circular sanding plate before adding a new one. I've tried Dremel tools as well but the mess is again a big problem. MDF can generate a lot of fine particles and they get everywhere. I like mounting my pieces anyway as you can add details to them but in this case it was a necessity as the plaster would have cracked in the thin part after extended use.

I used the Magic-Sculpt to make the stone flooring on the inside of the bunker as well. You could leave this as dirt or a smooth concrete surface as there are many examples of all of these in WW2 fortifications. In my case, I just wanted to try out a new sculpting tool! Once this was solidified (a 12-24 hour drying period) I added some details with some extra resin pieces I had lying around.You could make the same thing from cardboard, plastic sheet, or balsa wood.

The dirt and gravel outside the bunker was added by slathering on a coat of wood glue and sprinkling ballast, parakeet gravel, and kitty litter on the glue. Once this first layer of glue was dry, I tapped the bottom of the piece to get the excess off and then painted a thinned down layer of wood glue over the gravel so it would set and not be able to be brushed off easily when gaming. Unlike previous projects, I used black Artist's Gesso to prime this piece. I wanted a texture on the plaster (concrete) so it would dry brush nicely. As it turned out, the dry brushing looked like death warmed over so I painted the entire piece grey with some selected areas left with black streaks. That looked much better (as you can see below). The flock was a mix of Gale Force 9 products and I used clumps of the darker flock around the base of the bunker's outside to hide some of the seams. I do not like the way the door turned out, either. I am going to repaint it grey and leave the door on the inset a brown color.

All in all, this looks pretty good and is a nice space for a fire team. Since I had most of the materials already on hand, this cost next to nothing for a formidable defensive position!