36 miles of barbed wire: Part 2

The last three Savage Sundays aven't been all that savage. Two of them only Darrin showed up and so I shanghaied him into some terrrain making. Curtis also showed up for one. He was also forced to labour in my terrain making slave camp. They have enjoyed the fruits of my labours for years... it was time they helped out a bit....

The first week was documented in the previous post; 36 miles of barbed wire: Part 1.

Last week Curtis, Darrin and I started off making making some mud brick/adobe style houses. I cut the MDF and Darrin and Curtis glued them together.

(click on the pictures for a bigger version)


I have some sanding and painting to do yet, but it was a good start.

This didn't take nearly as long as I thought so we stared in on the wire again. Curtis and Darrin painted the posts dark brown and touched up the rest of the dark brown paint on the base.


Darrin and Curtis, my happy terrain slaves, painting posts and bases.

Meanwhile I started cutting strands of the wire. The wire I cut from nylon screen door mesh. Simply slice down between two strands and you will end up with a single strand with the remaining bits of the cross-strands closely approximating barbed wire. Do not use the metal screen as it is woven and the crossing strands are not .. well... attached in any way... trust me it just won't work.


that's me cutting those strands


Again with the cutting strands.

Shortly thereafter we called it a day.

During the last week I dry brushed the light brown on the bases.


In the lower part of the picture above are the ones that Curtis and Darrin finished touching up, above those are the ones I've been drybrushing.


There's all 36 stands of painted and ready for wire.

So again, as I mentioned earlier, only Darrin showed up today. He said he was up for some more terrain making so once again I put him to work! Darrin started off stringing the wire. I carried on with cutting strands for a bit, then helped with the strinning/glueing as well.


Darrin applying glue to base.

Here's how I do it. First I put a little dab of glue at the bottom of one of the corner posts. I use a cyanoacrylate glue - "Flash" or "Superglue". When they say use only in a well ventilated area they MEAN IT! Especially when your doing a LOT of gluing as we did! I opened a window right up (luckily it wasn't too cold today!). The War Room is still a bit stinky.

Anyway after I put that dab of glue on there I take an end of a strand and wrap it around that post and hold it tight until it's good and stuck. Then I'll put a wee dab of glue at the bottom of each of the posts and wrap the wire around them criss-crossing between them and around the perimeter If I have enough.

The strands I had (due to the size of scrap screen mesh I happen to have) were not all that long. each was just about enough to do one "layer" of wire.


Here's what it looks like when "layer one" is done.


For "layer two" I start at the bottom of a corner post again, but this time I run the wire around the perimeter of the stand wraping it alternatively at the top a of one post and the bottom of the next.


For "layer three" I start the top of one post and in a similar fashion to "layer one" I wrap wire around the tops of the posts. Sometimes around the perimeter, sometimes criss-crossing between them.

Presto they're finished.


By the time we were finished these our fingers were thoroughlly stuck together! GAH!

I will spray finish these to further solidify the wire on there and protect the paint on the posts. I might also throw on a few pebbles as field stones churned up by previous bombardments of the area, maybe some skulls and other bones I have kicking about in the bitz box, maybe even the odd rare tuft of static grass.

Well that was a big chore out of the way! BIG THANKS to Darrin for helping me out with that! I'll have to do this all over again three more times for my Vimy Project before I can do the whole corps attack... Yikes...!

Like it? Know a better way to make wire? Post a comment below!