Wire Barrier

Here's something closer to what I have in mind for the completed Wire Barrier:

New Wire Emplacements

Time to start the Serious Wire Emplacements:

Dry wall nails painted brown for the wire support posts. Tips cut off and ends blunted, hot glued to a thin plastic base with some texture smeared on it. There base gets grassed next, any clumps of small brush etc needs to go on before the wire gets put on as after the wire is on it will be really difficult to reach in there.

This shot shows where the main coil of wire is to be. In the pictures I looked at for the basic inspiration, there was a double row of coils.... but I'm not that dedicated... heh. Working on Criss Crossing and up and down angles of wire to the poles, generally to go up and over the coil so that a person has to pick there way through the strands to get to the coil to get to the strands. Should take infantry about 3 turns to clear through it, 4 to cut through and leave a wide gap for others to follow on, well that's the basic idea. Hope to assemble about 4 feet of this wire works in the end.

Finished Concertina Wire piece

Finally got one mounted up on its base. Thinking of filing down some small nails to put in and paint up as the type of metal rods they put in the rolls of wire if they had the time to. The rods kept the wire from being blown out of position or dragged away easily.

Cyclone Fencing

Time to tackle one of the last type of wire barrier fences, cyclone Fencing. So, I did a proof of concept work up on it, then topped it for most modern uses.

Here on the left is the cyclone fence without closer spacing of poles and overhead poles, but enough to get the concept. I did this one with the left of scrap, otherwise I would have cut the mesh on a 45 degree bias to get a diamond pattern for the fence, which is what I plan to do for the actual pieces I will make. The picture on the right shows the coiled concertina wire rolled smaller and attached to the top line. Another version of top wire would be an L or V shape leaning out or both ways that would have single strands of barb wire strung along them.

Concertina Wire Barriers

After making good looking barbed wire fences it was time to tackle Concertina wire barriers. I looked at various ways of making it, from multi strand twisted wire, clipped and shaped to two strands wrapped together with a heavier wire and thinner wire. They just didn't quite satisfy. So time to experiment and get some sort of fast production method.

This was a picture of a wire entanglement type that I saw at Terragenesis web site, lots of good stuff there, everyone should visit it! Even painted it looks sort of PG rated as far as dangerous looking. Sturdiness of such thin wire for this project was going to require it be mounted on bases and stored / transported in strong containers. But it needs pointy bits!

Basic materials are pictured on the left. Very thin floral wire and plastic screen window mesh. The mesh has Really strong fibers in it, trimming off long single strands was a really pain, slow tedious cutting. Have to work on how to cut it faster but the over view of the plastic mesh is that its not perfectly laid out during manufacture and is a tiny bit wavy, though not enough to see with the eye, but put a straight edge on it and its apparent.

Picture on the right shows single strands cut, shorter pieces can be used, but longer is way better for the construction process I'll cover. Picture on the right, not the best but the strand is Hot Glued to the end of the wire. I smeared about half an inch together with a glob on the end, it can be cut off later.

Yep, that's a cordless power drill with the connected strand / wire clamped in the end. Next step takes some practice to get it right. Use some short pieces, oh, about 12 inches to practice with. As you hold the trigger to a slow speed, as it turns, you let the strand Wrap around the wire. See below of figuring out how long your Wire should be for your barrier piece. To start the assembly for the completed wire, the  strand hangs down under my thumb. You have to get a lot of coverage as pictured, or when you form the large loops later some of the tight wrap loosens up and gaps enough to be visibly annoying. Cost of materials is extremely cheap per piece so if it breaks or does not come out right, toss it and after a few tries it starts working out very well. I had to stop 4 times to get another piece of strand material, each was about 4 feet long, and hot glued it to the end of the juncture of the last strand where it ended on the wire. Hot glue the end of the strand and wire together when the full length of the wire is done. Onwards!

That's a half inch wooden dowel in the bit of the cordless drill. The line on the dowel is the length of the barrier piece I want to make. I ran out a LONG piece of wire and hot glued it to the line on the dowel. Slow power and guide the wire wrapped it around the shaft. When it looked good and reached the end of the dowel I stopped, and Unwound it from the shaft, that is how I established how much wire to make the size barrier piece I wanted. This part is a bit of order, but trying to give a linear explanation to my intuitive creativity process can trip me up at times! Anyway, the combined strand / wire is hot glued to the wooden dowel at the drawn on line and Slowly powered up and fed onto the wood dowel. The picture on the right shows the finished project, click the picture to enlarge and see all the spiky goodness! At this point a couple small wipes of hot glue or some super glue here and there to hold the strands to the wire is a good idea. I use wide 6 inch long Popsicle sticks for the bases, I'll post some finished photos later.

Wire Fence changes

After tinkering with the fence assembly I learned that leaving some "wire" sticking off both sides, then trimming them to the end of the base rather than cut them off at the post, lets them sit together with the wires seemingly touching. Also, when spinning the base while holding the first attachment point of the wire, you need to make sure to spin many many times till it starts to knot up. Then stop spinning and carefully pull it straight across the poles and hold with one hand. Gets tricky to hold the taught wire in place with one hand and hot glue with the other, but WAIT!  Get that dab of hot glue on the post and wire, then put the glue gun down quickly, and carefully stretch the wire straight out and let cool. If you don't it will cool bent back around the post. When its cooled off you can get the middle posts hot glued easily.

The left picture shows how the ends meet up between the bases so that you do not have a series of "gaps" in the wire. Its a bit more visually pleasing overall I think. The picture on the right is the wire with a fast paint brush drag of gun metal paint over it.

Barbed Wire Fence

Need fencing for my western games, any field that is in the 1900's U.S. actually. Looking up various ways to go about it I hit on the following:

Using Big Popsicle sticks, cut down round wood tooth picks and hot glue. I smeared the spots for the fence posts first with the hot glue. The I smeared it onto the bottom quarter of the pegs, ending with a small glob on the bottom of the peg. I quickly tapped it and moved it about on the wood base, finally holding it still to cool standing up as shown in the picture on the right. Being a fast build project I put on a bit of texture and sprayed the whole assembly light green. Next came a quick PVA treatment to the "ground" followed by flocking. Let it dry for a few hours while doing yard work.

I cut long strips from plastic window screening, carefully removing every other long line, so to leave lots of visible "points" on a single strand. I got 4 feet by 5.5 feet for $4.45, the smallest amount I could buy, the box store did not sell it by the foot, as I really only needed about 6 inches of the roll to be in supply for ever!

Next step, hot glue the end of the strand to the first peg in the direction that it will finish up. Now, the trick to get lots and Lots of turns of the wire so as to make the spikes stick out in all directions, I dangled the base by the end of the strand and spun the base round and round till it got some shorter from all the twists. Hot glue it to the last peg, then press and hold as you hot glue the middle pegs. Last picture on the right with a 28mm colonial, shows the before strands in the back and the finished 3 strand fence in the front.  The base can have weeds added as well as small rocks and what have you. I have worked up 10 sticks, each is a bit over 6 inches long, as well as 3 sticks with a peg knocked down for switching when the fence gets drive over by cattle or vehicles.