Terrain- Fences & Barbed Wire

Fences

A long time ago, when I first started to plan getting scenery for my gaming table, I bought a collection of hedges from a seller on eBay. These have done their job superbly for me ever since. Later, I added some walls to this collection- the Italeri 'Stone Walls' kit from Warlord- allowing me further options for lining my roads and lanes and sectioning off fields. But I wanted more options.

I am a unrepentant coffee drinker by the bucket-load- and I have piles of coffee stirrers that I have liberated from the 'one stir and discard' fate of most of their kind. Instead, I have repurposed them for a more permanent and glorified function, as parts of various wargaming terrain. My other posts have shown the rounded ends working superbly for picket fencing. I split them lengthways to make planking for gates and doors. I've also done something similar here to make some lengths of fencing.

The bases are about 6 inches in length. I cut the rounded ends off a coffee stirrer, then slowly split it lengthways down the middle. The uprights for the fences were BBQ skewer lengths cut and glued to the base, to which the coffee stirrer 'planks' were attached.

After painting the fences, flock, tufts and foliage were added. I wanted to create a couple of damaged sections to give a bit of variation. In total, I made 10 fences out of just 5 stirrers and not even a full BBQ skewer- the value is crazy! So cheap and easy to make...

Barbed Wire Sections

I've had a roll of Warlord barbed wire rattling around in my modelling box for a while, so I decided to make use of it, particularly as I intend to paint my Airborne Royal Engineer section soon- at least they'll have something to dismantle!

The bases are the same size as the fences above- roughly 6" long. The ground stakes are lengths of paperclip. I closed up the bend and clipped off any excess wire, which meant I could get 3 stakes from one paperclip! I wound the roll of barbed wire around a thick paint brush and cut to a reasonable length to coil and fit on each base. A full roll filled 5 bases nicely. After adding grass, tufts and shrubbery, these were ready to go. Nice and simple...