Monday 18 July 2016

AWI terrain - fences

My 15mm terrain was looking distinctly European and I am planning to play some AWI in the next few weeks. Thanks to some useful terrain suggestions from Ross (much appreciated).  I have started to introduce some variety for my fences. As with all my 15mm and 20mm terrain I am taking a very simple approach to the building of terrain features which often employs balsa wood and simple paint techniques to avoid doing anything too fiddly.

Step 1 - Cut some MDF bases. In my case they are 6 inches long and 1 inch wide. Cut and stick balsa wood strips and tick to the base. Once the PVA rule is dry on each angle in the fence stick a cut matchstick on either side.

Step 2 - Paint the bases and use dark brown on the fence.


Step 3 - Using a light grey with a touch of medium brown watered down with 50% water to make a wash. This was is quickly painted the fence posts and sites to represent the fencing. No need to be too precise. The reason I use a wash is it flows on easily and doesn't look as stark on the dark brown which shows through a little bit.


Step 4 - Finally finish off the bases. I use a mixed grass flock of two parts light green and one part brown.

Step 5 - I like to coat my terrain in an acrylic matte varnish to keep the flock in place.

When I first looked into this project I did consider making everything with matchsticks, and I try one fence strip only to find it all a slow and sticky. This way of using balsa strips is a bit of a cheat, but it does work quite effectively for 15mm.

4 comments:

  1. Superb modelling - very effective and ecconomic AWI fences- a great job! Well done Peter. Regards. KEV.

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  2. They look just the thing. I'm going to have try thst dodge for my 1/72 ACW set up as I need lots more fences and gluing matches is indeed a pain.

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  3. Excellent idea and they actually look better this way too, I reckon!

    Cheers,
    Aaron

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  4. Thank you all for your kind comments. Terrain also needs to be quite robust as it gets piled into a draw at games end. Regards, Peter

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