Wednesday 7 August 2013

Terrain Tutorial: Industrial Style Fencing

Another bit of relatively easy utility terrain. Great for blocking lines of advance (in some systems), creating storage areas, supply depots and even basketball courts.

You will need:
Superglue
Good Pair of Scissors
Sand
Milli-put
Fine Metal Mesh (I got my mine from the paper mache section of an art store. Car body mesh also works well).
Small, thin wooden sticks - toothpicks, coffee stirrers, anything like that.
Basing Materials - in my case I like to use cake trays, because they're good and thick and the foil-treated surface helps prevent the cardboard from warping.
Some of what you will need.
 Step One: Eat the cake. Yum Yum.
Cut the basing material into long thin strips about an inch wide. I've cut mine into 8 inch long strips because my mesh comes in eight inch sections, to save a bit of measuring. Once you've done that, place three blobs of milliput on the strip. One at each end and one in the middle. If you're using the cake tray, you'll need to superglue these down, otherwise the milliput won't take. Then cut you're wooden sticks to size (I like 75mm) and stick them into the milliput. Build up more milliput around the stick to help secure it in place. The sticks don't all have to be exactly the right length (or even straight) because the fence posts would subside over time.

After the first few steps you'll have something like this.
 Next, cut the wire-mesh. You want each strip to be as long as the base and as tall as the fence posts. In my case, that mean's 8inches long by 75mm high. Yes I'm mixing my measures here. I'm a child of the metric-changeover period. I work with both systems. Place more milliput lobs between the posts (remember that if you're using the cake tray you will need to glue them in place. Push the mesh down into all five blobs and use superglue to stick the mesh to the posts. You may find you need to use more miliput or blue tac to keep the wire stuck to the sticks long enough for the glue to dry.
More milli-put blobs added and mesh fence in place.

 Now you need to frame the mesh in place between the original posts and a second set of three posts. Again, secure them to the base using milli-put (and super-glue if using the cake tray). You'll often find the posts don't want to stay together and will branch out to form a V shape. Use milli-put and superglue to fix the top's of the two posts together.
Stick the two posts together with milli-put and super-glue.

 Remember to make a set of gates using two sets of four fence posts. I tend to make one gate base for every two or three bases of normal fencing.
Gates
Once you've assembled your fences, let the milli-put set over night before doing anything else.

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