How to: make Barbed Wire stands‏

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all well.

My today's post is about barbed wire stands, and how you can make them. These stands, are meant to be used on every WW2 (and WW1 probably) battlefield. Barbed wire was a common means of defence, and its versatily meant that it couldbe used in all sorts of places. Roads, around fortified positions, around houses etc..

 My goal is to give you an idea of how you can enrich your terrain with some cheap solutions as this one.

Materials needed:

1. A bag of tile spacers (2mm). You can find them in any hardware store. I bought my bag (400 - 500 pcs) for 5 euro.

2. Ear cotton buds (used or unused - that's up to you!)

3. Many (depending on how many pieces you want to make) rectangular pieces of plastic (4.5 x 2). I used vinyl tiles (againg from my local hardware store)

4. Barbed wire. I got mine from www.war-wo​rld.co.uk and Army Painter.

5. Super glue

6. PVA glue and sand (optional: Vallejo White Pumice - my preference for speed results)

7. Static Grass

8. Pieces of foliage cluster (optional)

The method:

1. The materials needed in full display

2. Cut the ends of the cotton buds, and keep only the handles

3. Fill the handles' gaps (the plastic round pieces are hollow within) with some putty

4. Glue the tile spacers (two per base) on the bases. Two legs up, two legs down ( X ) - see photo below.

5. Glue the cotton buds handles on the tile spacers (where the two lines are crossed) - see photo below.

6. Apply Vallejo's White Pumice on the bases

7. Apply Army Painters Leather Brown spray on the stands

8. Paint the stands and the bases with dark Brown emulsion paint

9. Paint the base(s) with earth colours. I used a brown colour and then I drybrushed a light sand colour on them. I have also painted some bases in shades of grey (not 50, and not from the novel), for an urban wargames table (future project).

10. (Heavy) Drybrush the stands with Vallejo's Panzer Aces 310 Old Wood

11. (Light) Drybrush the stands with Vallejo's Model Colour 886 Green Grey

12. Apply some static grass and pieces of foliage cluster on the models. I find it easier to follow this step first, before I place the barbed wire (it can get messy - but you can suit yourselves and do what you think is right)

13. Apply Black Primer on the barbed wire (sparingly - don't cover the whole thing with it)

14. Take a brush and wrap the wire around it. When it comes in full circles cut down as much as you need for each stand

15.  Glue the ''round'' wire from end to end to each base. Pay attention while doing this, you must place some of its sides on the wooden (tile spacers, cotton buds) parts. I tried to make them as dense as possible

16. Finito!

And some ...old photos from back then. :-)

As you saw (those you managed to read the whole post, and didn't get bored in the meantime), it was very easy to make these models. And cheap too. All the pieces, appx 20 cost me around 15-18 euro. Not too bad I think. 

I hope you find this tutorial useful.

Have a great Wednesday night everyone!

T.