Hello all. I made some concertina wire using the window screen method talked about on another thread. I posted some pictures of it on a site I through together to host pictures. Please go check it out and let me know what you think. I have not finished it with any paint yet. What I want to know how it looks as far as size or scale, not the finish. I am not looking for a friendly "thats great" but rather an opinion as to wether this looks like the real stuff would at or around 1/35. thanks for the feedback.

http://andrewsmodels.tripod.com/concertina_wire.htm

Andrew,
Scale-wise it looks good to me. I will be interested in seeing the final product in terms of painting and such.

Good work!

Jim

I think you did a really good job.

Looks Great. Now Only if there was a easy to make razor wire...........


Matt

very nice work. Looks realistic on the deck of that tank.


Anthony

I had read that thread on concertina wire, and thought, "plastic screening - NAH! Couldn't be that easy!" But by God, from the pictures, it works for me. I thought it would be a little too large for 1/35, but apparently not. Great job on it.

(The sound of the door slamming you hear in background is me running to the hardware store for some screening!)

Cheers
Mike

Looks like it's in scale to me. Very good looking so far.

Excellent work Drew!......Now, can ya whip me up a couple hundred yards of the stuff! :-)

Tread.

Real scale...........hehe.

Thanks for the input guys. I am not a military man and have never seen it so I couldn't make the final call on it. I will get the digital camera out and start typing so I can have an article ready for the contest soon. thanks again guys

Great job....The coin looks unbelievably real !
Concertina wire too, by the way...Nicely done !
' ve a nice day...!

Very good job...
I never tried it and I also thought it probalbly became out of scale, but I was surprised with the results...

......so, I guess even a couple of hundred feet is out of the question too?

It looks great Andrew! In fact I just ripped out some screening from the living room windows to fill Treads order...LOL
Seriously though, it looks PDG! I'm found an ole screen in the back shed and am making some too. Scale is fine.

LOL.........once again Kenc', thx for making me LOL!

I bought the smallest role they had at home depot for under $6 and have enough material to make as much wire as we used in desert storm. I am going to try and finish some on sunday. I may not be completely done tommarow because I am going to base coat, wash, and dry brush but it should be done by monday sometime.

Wow, it really does look great coiled up like that. I think that method looks best when it's all twisted up to get out of the single-plane, 2D look of the windowscreen. If you can get the barbs all twisted around, and a couple of kinks in it, it looks super.

How are you planning on finishing it? I would think all you'd need is to drybrush it lightly with brown and a little orange to give it a rusty feel, then cut it off the screen and roll it up!

I have the base coat done on it, next I am going to wash it in some type of enamel rust mix. I am going to study the photos that I have of the wire a little closer before I decide wether to dry brush or not. from what I have seen so far the wire doesn't show any wear or lighter areas on the outer parts or edges to call for dry brushing, but I havn't decided on it yet. I may just dry brush a lighter shade of the base coat to add a little demensional effect to it. I will try some with and some without and post it and we can all decide what looks best.

well I think it looks good eventhough it is on a computer but it looks great. Now if you want it to look even bettet bend the hell out of a couple coils. because joe just drag's it all over and never gets it back togeather nice and tight. and the damn ties that hold it togeather one always breaks and the coil will rise on one side and bounces around in or on vehicle's. and the handle's are sometimes on but usually just one is on one side and the other is missing and you have to use plyers or an INFANTRYMAN's best friend a leatherman or a gerber tool to carry the stuff. and their are always leaves and tape and other misc. stuff in the wire as you retract it back to a coil . OK enough rambeling.

Looks good, Andrew !

For 1/72 scale, screen-made barbed wire is right to scale. For 1/35, the pins are a bit too close together, but it still looks quite convincing and it's a lot easier to make than twisting each set of pins separately.

For larger scales, I'm affraid we have to resort to more complex ways of making barbed wire.


For those who are about to clear Home Depot's stocks (or before Ken disturbs the peaceful relationship with his family members by ripping up the bedroom window screens too) , here's a word of warning from my own experience.

Be careful which type of screen you buy. Some are molded into one piece, other types are woven. Obviously, a woven screen cannot be used here. Once you cut the screen into separate wires, the cut pieces (the pins of the wire) fall off.
Hence, make sure you have a piece of screen that is made of one piece, not a woven one. Sometimes it takes a very close look to see the diference.

Example Image

UPDATED
Here's a pic of the real modern stuff.... not the older wire...

YodaMan
Go Red Wings.....heh heh, the Avs lost game 1....

Please remember this is modern concertina wire, not older barbed wire. I would agree if it was suppose to represent the former but if anything I would say the pins are to far apart for what it is. See this photo to see what I mean. I suppose you could use it for barbed wire, but thats not what I was trying to recreate.

example image (same as above)

whoa ! Those are really realy nasty barbed wires sitting on the back of that Abrams !

You're absolutely right : my mind was with the agricultural variety of pin wire. A bull in his right mind wouln't even think of jumping a fence of that stuff in your picture. That would pretty much ruin his professional (night)life.

I never saw the nasty stuff in your picture before. We did have razor wire in my army days (20 yrs ago), but nothing like that. Good thing for European livestock that your stuff isn't introduced to this neck of the woods yet. LOL !

Your window screen version comes terribly close to the real thing, Andrew.

Remember, the stuff you see on the back of the tank is concertina wire developed for combat use and not the stuff we use on cattle ranches. That stuff is the normal barbed wire. To see some really nasty razor wire, look at the stuff that tops the fences of many US prisons. I doubt any living creature could crawl through that stuff.

Rob,
When I was in the army a few boys in my platoon had bet they could manage to get over a concertina of razor wire at one of the ammo depots. They put their jackets on top and tried to crawl over. It took five people and wire cutters to get the first one out again. He was taken to hospital to have his leg stitched up... I was at another depot that day, but I saw the guy's leg later on ... il looked like he'd been in a shark attack !

But I've never seen wire like on the Abrams. Is that something new ?