Tutorial: Chain-link fences

Chain-link fences can be used for a lot of different settings. The motivation for me, to finally do these was for the prison part of The Walking Dead. But these will look just as good on my 40k battlefield, as part of Scrappers, Necromunda and This Is Not A Test. I've also made the footprint of the fences dividable by 3'', for easy fitting in Deadzone.

Materials

• Sprue or plastic rod
• MDF or thick card for bases
• Wire mesh from the hardware store
• Superglue
• Hot glue gun
• Wire (or model barbed wire). 

Step 1: Cut the poles
Cut some poles for the fence. I was lucky enough to still have some toy dinosaur cages (that's already done me good on two other builds: 1 and 2), that had the perfect length. And then I made the rest from model sprue plastic. Went with just over 3'' in length.

Step 2: Bases
I had some mdf sheets lying around from an old farm play set, otherwise I would have used thick cardboard. Made the bases 1,5'' broad to not tip over. The fence sections I made 6''. Cut the corners in a 45° angle, to make easy corners.

I also made a 6'' square base for building a gate area and made sure my police cars fit in it.

Step 3: Cut the fence
You can buy this stuff in the hardware store. It's fairly cheap. I find that the bigger the holes in the fence, the less it'll tear when cutting it. I used to sections of Mantic Battlezone tiles to make a 3''x6'' form and drawed it on the wire mesh.

Make sure you place the wire mesh diagonally, it looks much better. Use an old scissor to cut it.

Step 4: Hot glue!
I tried this with super glue, but it wasn't a good fix. Using my hot glue gun, I've put glue down an entire 6'' of the pole. Then press it onto the wire mesh. The hot glue, melted plastic made a very nice bind to the poles.

Step 5: Base it
Again with using hot glue gun, add a lot of glue in a line on the base. Press the entire fence into it and hold in place until the glue is cold. It looks over the top, but it'll hide later with sand and paint.

Step 6: Barbed wire
I totally forgot to take photos of this part. I had some Army Painter barbed wire from a sale (too expensive otherwise). But you can easily make it yourself, twisting to strains of wire around. I added to lines of barbed wire to the top of each fence.

Tie it around one pole, super glue in place. Then stretch and twist around the next poles. Super glue in place.

Gate Step 1:
Originally I was gonna build some frams from sprue. And either make a gate with bars (from more sprue) or add wire mesh into the frame. But chance would have it, my youngest (4 year old) was playing with the 'sci fi terrain project box' and pulled out these things.

I got them from a trade, no idea what they are from. But the click together and can make a bit areas. Cutting up one of these, made two perect sized gates sections. Glued those onto a base of 2mm plastic card.

Gate step 2: Barbed wire
I divided my last barbed wire into 4 equal pieces and rolled them around a pen. The result will be spring-like and it was hard to glue it on the top of the gates. In the end I used lots of super glue, laid the gate flat and but them between a box and coffee mug - while the superglue dried. After the glue had dried, I added another drop of superglue on top of each touching point.

Painting and showcase
I base coated the wire parts grey and bases brown with some cheap rattle cans. The gate I spray painted red (as red is a detail colour on my prison building).

The gate got the barbed wire and fence part painted grey. All gates and fences was then giving a wash. I mixed strong tone (Army Painter), brown tone (Army Painter) and dry rust (Vallejo).