Make WWII model furniture.
How to make Bunk beds.
How to make model furniture for a WWII Anderson Shelter.
In the 4th part of this craft project on how to make a realistic miniature version of a WWII bomb Shelter, you'll now add furniture to the inside of your Anderson shelter. For this, you will be making some bunk beds and also a few other pieces of easy to make WWII model furniture. As I have shown below.
Parent supervision required !!
For this simple project you will need:
Stiff or corrugated cardboard.
A ruler
A craft knife and Scissors
A Pencil or pen
Paint
A paint brush
PVA adhesive or sticky tape
Clothes Pegs
Glue spreader or glue stick
Some old fabric
candy floss sticks, straws or similar material
Stage 9: WWII model furniture, making model cabinets.
To begin with, measure the over-all internal width of the bomb shelter. This will then make it easier to decide on the width the cabinets will need to be. Having two cabinets should be sufficient to create the effect of being authentic as can be seen above.
Once you've decided on the width of the cabinets you will also need to source a few ready made boxes. However, if none are available you can make a suitable box for each cabinet by following the instructions within.
How to make a simple box for modelling.
To make a simple box, first take a piece of card and mark it out as shown above.
Next, make sure both your wide sides (height) and narrow sides (depth) are equal. Also, make sure you allow enough width on the side tabs to allow them to overlap when you fold them together. That is, make them just over half the width of your longest and narrowest side. As I have shown in the example.
The long end tab on the left of the example must be wide enough to join the box together. To join the box use either PVA glue or sticky tape.
Once you have completed the cabinet boxes they're ready to be painted.
In the examples shown you can see that I chose to paint the model furniture brown.
You're now ready to add some detail to the boxes to transform them into model cabinets.
You can either draw or paint a design on them. Or you can also source a suitable image online and scale it to fit your cabinet. Then print it off and simply stick it on.
To add even more authenticity I stuck a WWII war campaign poster onto the back wall of my Anderson shelter . The WWII campaign poster, like the cabinet fronts was again sourced online for this purpose.
In the image below you can see that I've also added some books and a first aid kit using the same method as the cabinets.
On the floor, you can also see a makeshift bed that I will explain how to make below.
Stage 10: How to make simple bunk beds.
First measure the depth of the model Anderson shelter to find out how long the sides of the bed will need to be. If you chose to put cabinets at the back of the shelter you will need to take that into account allowing for the depth of the cabinet and cutting the side pieces accordingly. It's probably best to place your cabinets inside the shelter while you do this.
You'll also need to measure the height of the model shelter to see how high the uprights will need to be.
Also, measure the width of the Anderson Shelter to work out how wide the bunk beds will need to be. Try to imagine the inside of the shelter as being a small bedroom and try to scale your bunk beds accordingly.
The components required for the bunk beds are:
4 of equal lengths of candy floss sticks, straws or similar material for the sides.
4 of equal lengths of candy floss sticks, straws or similar material for the uprights
A piece of stiff card large enough to make 3 model beds.
A piece of fabric or material of your choice to make the bed covers and pillow.
Step 1:Making WWII model bunk beds.
Once you've decided on the length of the model bunk bed sides. Make 3 cardboard templates to form the bed bases. Cover these with the material of your choice and then fix it to the underside of the template as shown. As well as that also add a rolled up or folded piece of material at one end of the bed to form the Pillow.
Stage 2:
First measure the length of the bed base then add the width of your chosen material, i.e. the width of your candy floss stick, straw or similar material to each end as shown in Fig 3. Once you have the correct measurement cut your 4 base supports as shown below.
Stage3:
After that, carefully stick your bed bases onto your base supports. You should now have something similar to Fig 3.
Stage 4:
Now that you have the bunk bed bases made you are ready to make the 4 uprights.
Now take the bed frame material and make 4 uprights of equal length. As can be seen below.
You're now finally ready to stick the bed bases to the uprights of the bunk beds. Additionally to get the beds level measure up each upright and make two marks at equal distances on each upright to position your beds.
As I have noted previously in this tutorial, you will need to use pegs to hold the bunk beds in position while they dry.
In the meantime you can now make the third single bed using the same method used to make your bed bases for the bunk beds.
With all of the above complete it is now time to move on to the last part of this tutorial and fully complete you model WWII Anderson Shelter.