How to make a Cardboard Ork Trukk (scratch building)

In our Warhammer 40000 army we have 3 Ork Trukk, one is the plastic ork trukk and the other two are cardboard Trukks make by us. This tutorial show the steps that we have followed to make our second cardboard Trukk. You can see the first Cardboard Trukk that we make in the next link: Cardboard Trukk.

(Entry with lots of pictures)

We started by drawing some drafts of the cockpit and making some drawings of the pieces needed to build the Trukk and their dimensions.
Draft

Dimensions Drawing 1

Dimensions Drawing 2

You can download the images above following the link, secondary clicking the pictures and selecting "save image as...".

The materials that we have used to build the Trukk are:

• Cardboard from a cereal box.
• Corrugated cardboard.
• Poster board.
• some empty pen ink cartridge.
• Plastic straw.
• A cardboard tube.
• Modelling Putty (in my case a mix of A+B white Modelling Putty and Green Stuff).
• Some pieces of a plastic sprue.
• A thick toothpick.
• Masking Tape.

My brother and I started by building the Trukk frame that will support the rest of the pieces. The measures for the frame are in the picture of the link "Dimensions Drawing 2" under its Spanish name Bastidor. We make the frame in corrugated cardboard.

We glued the frame pieces together and cover the holes of the corrugated cardboard with some masking tape.

Latter we made the pieces for the rear platform (Plataforma posterior in Spanish) where the ork boyz go, also in corrugated cardboard with the holes covered with masking tape. The platform is composed by the actual platform and the side protections.

We glued the platform to the frame with White Glue.

Before gluing the platform side protections we made the cockpit (Cabina in Spanish) that will help giving the side protections the right inclination. Building the cockpit is one of the most difficult things, specially if you want it to have different inclinations in their surfaces. In this trukk we tried to make a really difficult one and as a result we start building the cockpit several times until we get it right.

Below there are three picture showing some of the pieces of the part of the cockpit where the driver and the copilot are "seated".

The next two pictures show that part of the cockpit once it is assembly.

The three pictures below shows the nose of the cockpit that "covers" the engine.

And the next picture shows the nose glued to the rest of the cockpit. I don't know if you see it but we tried to give the cockpit a wolfish look.

We then build a cardboard piece that will close the cockpit from below as the same time that it materialize the mud guards and we glue it to the frame and after that we glue the cockpit on top of it.

When the cockpit is glued to the frame we glue the platform side protections starting gluing the small ones and later gluing the big ones with the same angle helping us with a ruler.

Now we make two corrugated cardboard rectangle pieces of 0.4x2.0 cm and we cover them with some masking tape. We glue this two rectangles to the front of the frame just below the cockpit. This pieces will hold the snowplow shovel that we are going to add later on.

Now we make the pieces for the two side doors (Puertas in Spanish) of the cockpit

And we glue them to the rest of the trukk.

We decided that the trukk will have two front wheels and two rear tank tracks.

The front wheels were made with putty and a cardboard tube. firstly we cut two pieces of cardboard tube of 1.2 cm.

Using the tube as a template we draw and cut two cardboard circles that we are going to glue inside the tubes.

Then we start with the putty:

1. We knead some putty and make a sausage with it. We push the putty around the tube trying to give it and uniform shape. This is only the initial volume so if there are some defects we will cover them later. We wait until the putty is cured.

2. We knead more putty and place it on top of the putty already cured. We have made more or less the same quantity as before. Now it is really important to give the putty an uniform shape and without any surface defects.

3. Before the putty is cured with a sculpting tool we start making some dents so it end up looking like a tire. Then we let the putty cure.

4. While the putty is curing we make some small pyramids from a piece of sprue, also if we have some putty left from one of the steps above we can make pyramid with it.

5. We knead some more putty. We make some putty sausages and place them on top of the tire along the axis of the tube to make some metallic reinforcement for the tire. You could try to give different shapes the different reinforcements. On top of the reinforcement we place the pyramids that we have made in the step above. Then with a pointy object we mark some holes on the sides of the reinforcements that will help us putting some putty rivets or bolts later on.

6. With some putty we make small balls and we push them against the holes to make some rivets.

7. Now we start working on the wheel rim, we made a putty sausage and place it inside the tube. we give it a circular shape and add some details.

8. In the hole left inside we place more putty and we shape it until we have something that we like. And the wheel is finished.

The Trukk is going to have tank tracks (Orugas traseras in the dimension drawing 2)  as rear wheels, because they are easier to make. We cut 4 equal pieces of corrugated cardboard and some cardboard strips of the right thickness. We can mark with a pen where the strips are bent to adapt themselves to the corrugated cardboard.

To join the  front wheels between them we use a thick toothpick. We also make some U shape cardboard pieces to assure that the toothpick is properly join to the frame.

Then we cut some cardboard rectangles that will give some relief to the tank tracks and we glue them in place.

We glue the tank tracks to the frame.

As the cockpit is quite separated from the ground we built a step in each side (Peldaños in Spanish).

In front of the track we are going to put a shovel as a reinforced ram but it is also possible to use some spare parts from the plastic Trukk. To make the shovel (Pala "quitanieves" in the Dimension Drawing 1) we make a cardboard pieces with two inclinations as the base and 7 cardboard rectangles of 3.5x1.5 cm, one for the middle, two for the sides, and four to place in each side of the cardboard rectangles that we glued just below the cockpit nose. We made a template in a piece of cardboard with a curved side, which we used to give all the pieces the same shape.

We place two weirdly shaped cardboard pieces on top of the curved side of the 7 pieces showed above. The shape of this two pieces is dependant of the curve used, one way to obtain this shape is to place a sheet of paper on top of the 7 pieces and make with it a template.

We added a little more details to the shovel with some poster board, and also add 4 cardboard teeth.

Then we made an exhaust pipe from a 4.2 cm piece of straw and some other things:

• Strips 2 mm thick of poster board for the rings.
• Cardboard to make the top and lower covers of the straw.
• A piece of pen ink cartridge bent with the heat of a flame to join the straw to the frame.
• Some holes make with a hot paperclip.

This trukk is going to have a rokkit launcha. In Dimensions Drawing 1 you can find the pieces to make it under Lanzakohetez. We made the rockets with some toothpick covered with some poster board and some putty.

To finish with the trukk we only have to add a lot of armour plates and some rivets.

Once the trukks is painted it looks like this.

In the picture below you could see a comparative between the plastic Trukk and our two cardboard trukks. Now all three of them are painted but I don't have a picture of the three painted trukks together.