Westlake Publishing Forums

Barney,

You're right, the modelers on this forum inspire doing good stuff.

My first thought was to use a strand of very thin copper wire from a headphone to make staples for the fences! That would have readily solved the problem of the glue popping loose.
But my fence posts are bamboo skewers that I thinned down to scale diameter, and drilling 3 or 4 holes in each post for the "staples" made the posts too fragile to plant into the scenery.

I found a photo of a fence on the Pendon Layout and am very impressed with those staples!!! I wonder what their fence posts are made of? They look a little heavier than mine.

Your  doing great  - keep the good work up and just keeping it  coming - its these little things that make his forum great
The 00 scale English model railway at PENDON ENGLAND even put the staples in the fence post !!  I believe they use
PE barded wire with a robin  on one of them.
Barney   

Thanks, Barney. I tumbled into the small scale, small detail rabbit hole quite awhile ago. I try to rationalize it by noting that because my layout is tiny, there aren't nearly as many things to detail. I like trying to capture small stuff, though when I remember the HO scale models and scenes that Anders Malmberg used to post, my stuff doesn't seem all that detailed.

Bill how do you do it - Do your eyeballs ache or worst still a bad headache ! like a hangover without the booze ! (which is the worst sort ) dealing with such small scales - Im having a problem returning to 1/35th scale dealing with the little fiddle bits . I think at some point a compromise is required in small detail -  But The word compromise was not recognised by BUGATTI the car man but hid also say BENTLY make very fast Lorries  !!
Barney

No, you don't have to stand in the corner for cheating with digital skies, young William. Instead, I encourage you to run for public office, where any kind of cheating is a virtue. -- ssuR

Russ, I did cheat in the third photo with the train, not with the 'barbed wire', but with the sky.
The white 'sky' above the train is overexposed natural light from a window, but the white 'sky' above the cows and big tree was digitally added to eliminate part of a wall and bookcase.
Do I have to stand in the corner for that?

Everything looks good in the photos. Which reminds me: Next time, to avoid aggravation, just glue in the fenceposts and use a photo editing program to add the barbed wire. Or is that cheating? -- Russ

The first fence used a sample of EZ Line (from Berkshire Junction). It's their thinnest line, and it's in their rust color.

EZ Line is a very interesting elastic polymer. It can stretch quite a bit (they say 700%) without putting tension on whatever it's attached to. I used it on the short section of visible fence near a switch ground throw hoping that if the fence gets accidentally bumped when reaching in to throw that switch the line wouldn't pop off the posts or break them.

I made the fence on my work desk and then installed it on the layout, thinking that would work better than trying to assemble it in place. That didn't go as nicely as hoped. Some of the tiny glue spots popped loose many times. And I couldn't get the line to sag just a little between the posts.


For the other fences I used the thinnest polyester sewing thread. It's noticeably oversize, but I'll live with it. (The other option I discarded was using fine strands of copper wire soldered to copper wire fence posts.)

As feared, the thread also easily pops loose from the posts because there is so little surface area for the glue contact, but these fences should be less likely to get bumped into.

This was supposed to be a quick and simple detail addition...

Thank you Kim. Local art shops used to have that but not now. Fast and simple is applying to them too.