Building An Echelon

As my armies are nearing their full compliment of soldiers, I've figured it was time to start on the support units. To that end, I've started building the large support features; the Echelons and the Hospitals. Here, I will explain how I constructed Army Black's echelon.

Step 1 - I marked the locations of the frames, drilled the holes, and mounted the frames. The main frame is made from clothes hanger. The cross frames are floral wire.

Step 2 - Flock the base. I flocked the inside of the tent as well.

Step 3 - Mark the paper for the tent back. I used textured paper. I repeated the process for each side.

Step 4 - Apply glue to the flaps and wrap them around the frame. Stretch the paper as tight as possible. Do the front and back.

Step 5 - The vertical tabs for the tent sides are attached to the inside of the front and back walls. I started with the vertical tab on the front wall. I then attached the horizontal tabs from front to back and finally the back vertical tab was attached. Repeat the process for the other side.

Step 6 - Glue boxes inside the tent. I found the large boxes at the juniorgeneral.com. The smaller boxes are prototypes from the Virtual Armchair General. I placed the boxes before putting on the roof because its easier than trying to stack them through the door. I stacked them in a "U" shaped pattern around the door so I didn't have to build tons of boxes.

Step 7 - Mark and cut out the roof. The roof is then glued on. The tabs for the roof are glued to the outside of the tent so they should be made as small as possible.

This completes the tent.

The flag pole is made from a clothes hanger. I used a peice of brass tubing to hold the flagpole. this allows the flagpole to be removed for storage. The barrels came from the hobby store. The labels are from Patrick at TVAG, as are the other boxes and the flags.

Here are the finished products:
Army Black Echelon

Army Red Echelon