The blockhouse was a very different undertaking from the tent. Here I could not just do a simple folded paper construction. The first floor of the blockhouse was built of sandbags, the second floor of timbers. I needed to model that look.

For sandbags, I always rely on white beans. You can make sandbags out of putty or clay and get a more realistic look, but you will also spend three times as long on the project and it won't look three times better. White beans come in a variety of sizes, I use something larger than a navy bean.

I knew that I wanted eight figures to be able to defend the sandbags, two per wall. After playing with some figures on a sheet of paper, I decided the enclosure should have an inside dimension of 3 inches square. I added on the size of two rows of beans and two figure bases to come up with an overall base size of about 5 ¹/₄" square. Why? Adding the size of the beans is obvious. You also want the base of the piece to extend beyond the walls of beans to protect them while handling it. If the base is going to stick out beyond the beans, it needs to stick out far enough for a figure to stand on it. Otherwise, if the figure is half on, half off the base, it will tip crazily away from the blockhouse and look stupid. That's why the base needed to extend beyond the walls far enough for a figure to stand on it entirely.

When gluing down the beans, I use rubber cement. It's flexible rather than brittle, so jarring is less likely to snap off beans. More importantly, rubber cement does not shrink when it dries. If you use white glue or just about any other sort of craft glue, it will shrink and cause your cardboard base to curl up, which is ugly and aggravating.

With the inside of the enclosure marked on the base, I laid down the first row of beans, being sure to leave an opening for the doorway. Drizzle a row of rubber goo along one side and poke the beans into it. Don't brush the cement down, it will be too thin. The cement takes longer to dry than it takes to lay down a layer of beans, so I had to take a break after each layer and do something else for a while: paint miniatures, clean the kitchen, explain for the twentieth time to my kids what I was doing. Before long, the walls started to take shape.

I checked occasionally to see how they were doing height-wise (and, let's face it, it's fun to place figures inside and see how things are shaping up).

Once the walls were high enough, I needed to put in something to support the roof and the upper story. For the supports I used square balsa sticks. I glued two support posts into each corner, glued lintels across the posts, and then glued another support post into the middle of each wall. White glue is best for this sort of work.

Next, I needed a roof. If you look at the original photo again, you'll see that the second floor is turned 45 degrees off the first floor to give better firing angles. I wanted the first floor roof to completely overhang the sandbags, so it needed to be a square 3 ³/₄" on a side. I determined the size of the second floor purely by eyeball, picking an overlap that looked good. I also cut a second piece of matte board that was slightly smaller than the opening left between the first floor lintels. This was glued to the underside of the first floor roof to make it easier to get the roof in the proper position and to keep the roof from sliding sideways or slipping off when jostled. (The underside of the roof has those strange black-and-white markings on it because a few years ago I put some stands of 15mm figures on this cardboard before priming them black. As I stated earlier, almost everything used in this project was already on hand.)

Finally, I plopped the completed first floor roof/second floor onto the beams and beheld my work. I could almost see the engineer officers pause a moment to beam proudly before telling some tired, sweating private to pick up the pace, there's no telling where fuzzy wuzzy might be.

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