Sitting on the fence

[Modhail]

Í'm having a week off at the moment.  :mrgreen:  But sadly, I'll most likely have precious little to show for it, hobbywise... The misses does have to work (which leaves me in charge of "junior") and with our son's various birthday celebrations taking up the latter half of the week, I'm guessing the only one actually experiencing extra free time for my taking days off will be the babysitter...    
Well, I'm not going to have that!
So I had a nice sit down this afternoon and cranked these out:


I decided on some measurements (they're 12 cm long and about 5 cm high), got my tools and materials out and started cutting and glueing... I found it best to alternate tasks so the glue could have some time to dry in between steps.
I first cut the support posts (4x4 mm balsa) and the horizontal beams (2x4mm balsa).
These were then glued into frames and set aside to dry. After this the bases were cut from 1.5 mm plasticard. I tried to get a balance between stability and keeping the footprint as small as possible for these. The bases taper at the end so I can set the walls at right angles to each other.
The (now hardened) frames were glued onto the bases and set aside to dry.
In the meantime I cut the boards of the fence (again from 2mm balsa)
When glueing the boards onto the frame I took special care not to be too neat, and played around a bit with damaged and loose boards. (got a little carried away on one...)
I even tried making a hinged door, but I slipped with the glue into a hinge so it's now permanently shut.  :cry:



Finally I glued sand on the bases and cut some rectangles of paper. These were soaked in about 50/50 white glue and water, and glued onto the fences to function as pasted on pamplets.

I'll most likely paint the pamphlets as just black and white prints, so the fences stay nice and generic.

I'm a bit unsure about the softness of the balsa though... I'm wondering what to do with it. Should I just stain the wood before painting, so the inevitable chips won't show up as much, or is there a way to "harden" the wood before painting?
Do you guys have some advice you could give me?

Bye, Erik

P.S. Don't expect to see this painted soon... Tomorrow's my son's "kids party", friday the actual birthday, which means we'll have his grandparents around all day, saturday is cleanup, shopping and prep for sunday, which will be my son's and wife's combined birthday party. (Her birthday is next week....)

[Malamute]

When I paint balsa wood I use Burnt Umber acrylic straight from the tube watered down a bit. The wood aborbs the paint well and the grain shows through. Its then just a light drybrush of an off white or bone colour.
They look pretty sturdy enough, just be carefull how you store them. Nicely done and I like the pamphlets/posters idea too.

[Germy]

Nice fences, I used balsa wood for the first time when I made a Wickerman for my fantasy gaming. I was surprised how well the wood took to being painted and loved the results.

Details of how I painted the wickerman can be seen here
Hope that gives you some ideas.

[Ironworker]

Those fences are great.  Nice wickerman too.

[fritzy]

Nice looking fences, another to do job on the list. Have you tried using Matte cote on them. That may work,

Cheers

Fritzy

[Braxandur]

wow, they look great!

until now, I've been to lay to make real fences and just used the Ainsty ones, but this looks so great I might need to copy your idea

[Lowtardog]

I spray undercoat in black and then like Malamute wet brush dark brown onto the wood and a dry brush of an off white or cream/bone or some such for dry weathered look.

The black undercoat will cover a multitude of sins :oops:

[twrchtrwyth]

Nice.

[Modhail]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I spent tonight painting them in watered down pva to seal the surface. This should harden them up a bit and also prevent the primer from soaking in too deep...

Hopefully I'll find the time to paint them sometime next week...

Bye, Erik

[Germy]

Definately be interested in the results.

[Modhail]

And here they are!
Unfortunately the camera's batteries died on me after taking the first few detail pics.  Once I get a nice picture of a decent layout with some models and other terrain in, I'll put a topic in the terrain board...
So far I only got to take 2 quick snaps of them all together and some close-ups of some details:



The back of the door:


Closeups of various posters:



I kept the posters fairly simple, to represent rather primitive printing methods. That way I can use them for everything from Warmachine and VSF to pulp and modern day zombie games...

Bye, Erik

[drferling]

Those are really cool looking.  The gates are especially nice looking.  I hope you don't mind me copying the great hinges.


Have you thought of giving them a really light gray dry-brush to give the wood a weathered look?

[Modhail]

Sure, go right ahead! All it takes is a strip of plasticard, a small piece of plastic tubing and a bent pin. (If you're more carefull with glueing them than I was, they could even be functional!)
If you go with functional hinges, I think omitting the tube, and using a longer thinner strip of plasticard, folded over the pin, will be sturdier. At least, that's what I'll be trying next time....

Thanks for the tip!
These pictures don't show it well for some reason, but the top third of the fences have been drybrushed with an extra helping of vallejo Iraqui Sand. This makes them quite pale already. I'm putting these fences aside for a couple of days before I look at them again and maybe tweak them some more. I'll certainly keep the light grey in mind! (And my wife suggested adding bird droppings, so I'll have to break out the light grey paints anyway...  )

Bye, Erik

[postal]

wow the pamplets look great.