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.