Thursday, July 12, 2012

28mm Barbed Wire Tutorial


I decided I needed to make some barbed wire for 28mm gaming for both World Wars and beyond. I did not have much trouble with this project and I consider myself an amateur at best. This build comes down to time. As they say time is money. Not counting drying times this took me about 4 hours which I don't think is too bad. I could have bought ready to go barbed wire but I enjoy creating terrain as much as I enjoy war gaming.



To start this project I bought some MDF board and had my brother use his table saw to cut it which saved me a lot of time cutting it by hand. I had him cut them into 8 inches by 2-inch pieces.


I took a piece of sand paper and ran it over the edges to smooth them out. Next, I tried using hot glue to glue the matchsticks to the MDF board but it wasn't very strong so I got my Dremel tool and drilled holes into the MDF to mount the matchsticks. Once I had the matchsticks in place I used a bit of hot glue to keep them in place.


Once I had all the boards done I mixed up a batch of spackling compound and covered the base with it. When I had all the boards done I waited 24 hours for them to dry.


When they were dry I painted the boards with brown paint. After I painted each board I sprinkled some sand over the wet paint to give it some texture. When the paint dried I hit it with another coat to keep the sand in place.


After the second coat of brown was dried I mixed up a lighter color by adding white to the brown and proceeded to dry brush the ground.

When I was happy with the ground I moved onto the fence posts. I started by painting them black. Next, I dry brushed them with a craft store paint, I don't remember the color but it's similar to Khaki. I added a bit of white to the Khaki and dry brushed the posts again. I dry brushed them a few more times each time I added more white into the mix. Then I gave the posts a wash before one more highlight of pure white.


When I was happy with the fences I added some static grass onto the bases here and there.
Next, it was time to make the wire. I took 2 pieces of wire and twisted them together using a drill. As you can see below it looks pretty good.


To get the barbs I took small pieces of wire and tied it into a knot onto the twisted piece of wire then just cut the ends to size.


The last step starts with gluing the pieces of barbed wire onto the wood stakes.When the glue was dry I painted the wire gunmetal and finished it off with a black wash and that's it. Overall I'm very happy with the results and I think the time I put into it was worth the effort. 



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