"25mm / 28mm Barbed Wire tips?" Topic

Hello,

I am looking to create some barbed wire obstacles for Chain of Command / Bolt Action games. There are plenty of hobby suppliers who will sell specialized "miniature barbed wire" which is two strands of different-diameter wire coiled around each other. What I'm wondering, is there a name for this stuff in the "real world" I can go to my local hardware store and ask for?

If not, is there some other common item people have used to make simulated barbed wire with? I was thinking of getting some floss, knotting it over and over, and then painting it, but that seems like way too much work.

Hi

Its called Sealing wire

wymac-development.co.uk

If I remember rightly I bought GLW8 for 28mm and GLW9 for 15mm on 1kg reels, I still have a lot of wire left, in fact probably enough to do the Western front in 6mm :-)

Also buying from these is a lot cheaper than hobby suppliers

For 3KG of wire I paid £12.00 GBP and then an extra £10.00 GBP for postage, for about 1800 metres of wire!!

hope that helps
MH
:-)

I used window screening. Volunteered to fix those ratty screens we had, won points with the wife, and coincidentally ended up with a lifetime supply of barbed wire. Trim it into individual threads, string it like a fence. Or cut it into a rectangle, cut the inner lines into threds, wind it around and glue it down, and you've got coiled barbed wire. There's an example here:

link

Plastic screen door screen. Cut between rows and the cross row pieces look like barbs. Hundreds of rows for pennies. Nontoxic, won't rust, won't cut ham fisted gamers hands. Not tested on animals.

Thosmoss beat me to it!

I bought a wire mesh sold at Micheal's Craft store. It's used for forming sculpts and paper mache.

Cut into lines and twisted around toothpickes stuck into styrofoam.

Final result.

I went with Big Reds idea but used metal screen mesh from an old door. I didn't do the twists (pointy part of barbed wire) because of speed and just too fiddly for 28mm for me.

While those examples look better I found that the basic coil from a notepad looks quite good after a good lick of paint.

Wow, you guys are awesome. The TMP community comes through again. That "sealing wire" looks the best but it seems to be more of a EU/UK thing; canty find any suppliers out here in California. So I'm going with the aluminum window screen idea; we'll see how that goes. Thanks!

For concertina wire with my 20mm troops I use picture-frame-hanging wire wrapped around a pencil (without the pencil).
link

I found the aluminum screen wire at Home Depot was not actually connected at each point, the wire moved around and was just interwoven. That's why I used the Forming mesh.

If you have the time to make it, you can do it by twisting two strands of wire together to make a base, then twist on barbs individually (three turns is enough). Wrap the whole thing around a pencil to get the coils. All you need are clippers, wire and patience. Looks impeccably authentic for old fashioned or farming barbwire, though not for razorwire and not worth doing at smaller scales.

I have a picture with the stuff I did, but I can't access the link at work. I'll try to add later.

Didn't have any pictures as it turns out, so I took a new one:

With Flaming Carrot for scale. Any excuse to show him off now he's painted…

I think I used something like 0.5mm tie wire. Not sure. Anything really thin and uncoated which isn't too stiff should do. Fuse wire used to come in very fine grades, but dunno if there's any call for it much these days.