How to fence

Here's my basic steps for creating fences for 28mm figures:

Materials:

• 6" large tongue depressors
• Matchsticks
• White glue
• 30 gauge florist's wire or similar. The florist's wire is thin and flexible enough to bend easily but it's quite sturdy
• Brown craft paint and mid-grey paint
• Turf mix (mine started out as 2 parts fine to 1 part course but I think there's far more fine now)
• Optional: scalpel or chisel-blade for an exacto knife

Steps:

1. Start by drilling 3 holes into the tongue depressors. The holes should be slightly smaller than the matchstick.
   
2. Dab a bit of glue on one end of the matchstick and stick it into the hole. If the hole is slightly smaller, you might have to rotate the matchstick a bit to knock the corners off to get it into the hole. The tighter the fit, the better. Repeat for the other two holes.
3. When the glue is dry, use the scalpel or chisel blade to flatten the bottom if the matchstick pokes through a bit.
4. Slap the brown paint over the entire construction.
5. Take about an 8" length of wire and curl a little hook into it. Put that on one of the end posts and then wrap the wire so that you have complete loop.
6. Keeping some tension on the wire, loop around the middle post and then loop around the other end post. Snip off the excess. Dab a little white glue on the loops to keep things in place. If you have bit sticking out from the snip, encase it with white glue.
7. Add a second wire to the fence repeating steps 5 and 6.
8. Cut the posts just above the upper wire. Paint the ends brown
9. Take some grey paint and dry brush the grey on keeping some of the brown exposed in lower areas.
10. Apply white glue to the brown tongue depressor.
11. Apply your turf mix to the glue.
    

Fencing

Time for some crafts. I've started to create some fences for my 28mm figures. Here is the first couple, which are simple "Do not trespass" style wire fences. In Chain of Command, they might prevent "on the double" movement but that is about it.

On the second fence, the post snapped as I pulled the wire tight. So we have a broken fence instead of a fully intact one. Not a problem.

Objectives for 2015

This is usually something that you do for the first few days in the new year, but I'll do it now.

These are the things I want to do for 2015 but not necessarily in this order:

• Finish the supply train and camps for my 2mm ACW armies
• Work on my Adler 6mm Germans. I have a lot so completing them is not realistic
• Try and finish all of the 6mm vehicles that Stephen gave me to paint plus all of my vehicles
• Create barbed wire obstacles,for 28mm figures
• Create minefield markers for 28mm figures
• Create bocage and hedges for 28mm figures
• Create trees for 28mm figures. I now have the armatures and clump foliage
• Cut up a cobblestone mat to create city roads for 28 mm figures
• Repaint and rebase the pine trees for 28mm figures. These are Christmas diorama trees that I picked up for half price.
• Create more smoke markers
• Create explosion markers for 28mm figures

Plus I want to pick up some more 28mm Russian troops, a 28mm Russian AT gun, some 28mm Germans, some MDF buildings, and anything else that strikes my fancy.