My first Do It Yourself terrain post will be about an effective obstacle against infantry (and cavalry): the barbed wire. As it is a cheap, easy to deploy and replace tool to protect or deny movement to certain areas, and was used in different forms since the American Civil War, having it on a gaming table is almost mandatory (depending on the theme of the game of course).
In my experience wargaming terrain could be between the really cheap and symbolic ones and the expensive and maximally realistic ones. I don’t say any of it is good or bad, it all depends on your (financial) options and taste. With limited budget I like to prepare and build my own terrains and it is also a good free time activity, if painting minis are not possible, which is true especially during winters. To build your own pieces you will need to decide on the scale, size, material and technique. Scale is normally given, except if you are thinking on starting a new project. With the problem of size, I usually deal in a way, that I check the size of the available product on the web (well, not the most elegant way, but it’s working). Materials and technique depend on what I have at home or can easily purchase. I try to look for a couple of producing methods as sources and from those I create my own one. If there are any gaps in the process, then the classic Improvise, Adapt and Overcome mindset is activated. 🙂
So back to the barbed wires. I would like to have a couple of straight sections, with a minimal size base, so it does not interfere with the table (large bases could look a bit silly if you put them on hills or other uneven surfaces). The scale is given as I usually work in 15mm. Before mass production I have made a prototype and in this post I’m going to show how.
Wire
For the barbed wire I used some old wires that I have had since the Stone Ages. To making them into barbed I used one of the techniques from this video. I decided to try to weave my own barbed wire. For that first I cut three, almost even length of wire segments. If it is wavy, like in my case, don’t worry, it will not influence the final result. I connected the three wires to each other at both ends, then I scrolled the ends onto two normal pencils. These pencils will be the handles, so you just need to grab one of them then rotate the other one. You will need to rotate it until there is no gap between the three wires and it has a decent look as a barbed wire (hard to word it, after a couple of tries you will see 😉 ). After the rotation, you can remove the pencils from the ends. To prepare the coil shape you only need to wind up the barbed wire on one of the pencils. Don’t worry about the density of the loops, you can modify it later.
The three wires 
Connection 
Ready for twisting 
After twisting 
Wind up on a pencil 
The final coil without the endings
When your coil is ready you can cut down the endings, where you connected the original wires, and with pliers press the snags. Next phase is painting. If your wire is not painted originally or it has some special colours, like yellow, then prime it with black. After that you can drybush it with grey and/or metal colours. I didn’t prime mine, just heavily drybushed it with Oily Steel (865).
It is not necessary to make a base for your coil, you can use it as it is on your table. The most important is that you should like the result and use it in your games!
Base
As I said I want to have a minimal size base and use something I already have home. My choice was wooden medical spatula (the thing that the doctor puts into your mouth to check on your throat). It is solid enough to hold the whole terrain, narrow, so will not interfere with other terrain features and I have a big pile of it.
The first with the base was to build up some ground, which will hold the wooden frames and the wires. For that I used structure paste. Before that I tried PVA glue, but it would take a painful amount of layers to reach the desired thickness.
The wooden frames were made out of leftover sprues. I cut some straight segments (to be honest I did not measure the length of them, used some minis as scale), one is shorter as if it is damaged. I glued every pair together to form many X-es with superglue. Once the pasta dried, I glued the frames onto the base with PVA.
To cover the dried pasta and to recreate ground effect I used Vallejo’s acrylic brown earth texture, which is a coloured mixture of some kind of paste and sand. It is easy to use, you only need a brush to spread it on the surface, and dries in around 45-90 minutes. Later you can wash this base with black or brown washes. In this case I used the black one, but later will rather stick to brown. After the wash I drybushed it with Vallejo Flat Earth (983) and Iraqui Sand (819). To finish it I used two different grasses and fixed them with PVA glue.
Assembly and conclusion
To finish the terrain element, I just put the wires on the frames, as the coils work like a spring and they stabilize themselves. With that if I want to use a different base, like a winter or desert theme, I don’t have to make new coils. If you want to have something more permanent, you can use superglue or PVA.
The base with grass and the coils 
Next to some freshly made British infantry
In summary I am not saying that this is the most beautiful barbed wire section I have ever seen in my life, but it was cheap and easy to produce so I can make almost as many as I want. If you like this method, try it, and let me know how it worked or what you changed to make it better! 🙂
Minis with moustaches 
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