Coolest Army Man in Tank Costume

My idea was to take a cardboard box and put a cardboard tube in it, but as you can see my husband got a little more technical. He wanted everything to scale. Everything to look just right. We even used trigonometry to figure out the angles. It isn’t quite to scale (I convinced him 7 feet long was a bit much), it measures 5 foot long and 2 and a half foot wide.

The inside of this tank has a wooden frame with casters on the bottom. There are carboard undersides and cardboard tubes sliced into 2 inch pieces for the tires. We then cut 6″ wide strips of carboard and bent them every 2 or so bumps sprayed black to make the tread look.
The next layer of cardboard is all one piece. Hood, sides, and bumper plus the tabs inside to hold it all together (yeah Duct Tape!). It was then painted army green. It slides on and off the bottom frame for easier travel.

The top piece, the turret, is by far the coolest. It is also just one piece of cardboard. My huband figured out the different trapezoids and they all fold together with under tabs to duct tape them together. A hole was then cut out for the cannon, which is just a sturdy cardboard tube (same type as the once we sliced up for the tires). This piece is also seperate so we can travel easier. It usually has to travel upside down due to the angle of the cannon.

So hence was born our tank. This Homemade Army Man in Tank Costume got everyone’s attention everywhere we went.