Barbed wire for our WWI games

I've been steadily putting together some barbed wire sections for our WWI games and have gotten quite a routine together now with about 36" of double sections done now - 72" if you want it to look like a farmers fence.

All the materials are quite cheap and readily available. You can get 6m of the wire from Northstar for £3.50 and that is probably the most expensive component. I've used nearly two of these so far.

Other materials are:

• Mitre Bond (available from Screwfix Direct)
• Bamboo skewers
• Mounting board cut into rough rectangles about 3" x 4"
• Pumice gel

Using my sprue cutters I cut the skewers into ~30mm lengths, it does not matter if they are all different sizes, I think that looks better. Sand the ends flat.

Put a couple of blobs of glue on the the mounting card. The glue with the Mitre Bond is a high viscosity super-glue.

Hold two of the posts in place and give them a blast with the accelerator.

Now do another two blobs of glue. I do my wire in 'V' shapes I don't want them to look like Farmer Giles fences on the battlefield.

Again, a couple more posts and a blast with the accelerator. This sets the glue like concrete in about ten seconds.

Most of my bases have four posts, although some have five and some three to allow a planked walkway through the wire.

I then cut out rough shapes around the posts, cut quite close to them so that they can but up quite close.

We can now make a start with the wire.

First I do the bottom strand, wrapping it around each post

I then do a middle strand alternating between the bottom and top of each post, then do the top strand. A small blob of super-glue where each wire is attached to the post.

The bases are then given a coat of Pumice Gel although I forgot to take a photo of that.

The bottom of the bases are then given a coat of paint, this both seals them and helps prevent warping, although you will still get a bit.

The tops are then painted brown, I use Dulux tester pots for this as it's far cheaper than model paints. This one is Dulux "Wicker Dream 1" about £3.00 for 250ml

The posts are painted Chocolate Brown

The wire is painted Beige Brown

The bases are given a highlight of Flat Earth

Then another with 4 parts Flat Earth to 1 part Dark Sand

Final highlight of 2 parts Flat Earth to 1 part Dark and

The wire is then given a wash of Red Orange

The wire in action in our recent game