FF35009
1:35th Etched barbed wire & posts
£21.50
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A comprehensive etched 1/35th scale barbed wire (beware..it really works!) and standard German WW-II barbed angle iron posts. The sets provided make into the most convincing German wire system possible.
Excellent product with excellent results.
I am building a large scale D-Day diorama in 1:35 scale and so far, this is the only "true to scale" choice in order to cram the shores of either Omaha Beach, Juno, Gold, Sword or even Utah with highly accurate German obstacles.
In this particular instance I am referring to the "angled iron posts" and the "barbed wire" included in this kit.
Granted, it is reserved for the more skilled builder (not for beginners, since we are talking about etched parts which could be harmful for less experienced hands), but there are no alternatives on the market these days, at least not in injection molded form.
I have bent these in form and "wired" an entire perimeter of what I consider the most crucial point where these were used and seen in Normandy: I am speaking of Pointe-du-Hoc, where the U.S. Rangers had a rather rough/tough time against such defenses.
Of course these posts have to be "aged and weathered" once bent into shape and before applying "barbed wire".
For this specific purpose I do use an "AK Interactive" photo-etched burnishing solution which darkens any PE piece one dips in.
I then give it a coat of Black primer and proceed with the "weathering" process, which I do with both specific "weathering" products (AK, MIR, Vallejo, etc.) and some pastel dust (for rust, I use a mixture of Burnt Umber, Orange and Brick Color, a sort of reddish Brown). Et voila, the trick has worked.
Once this passage is done and everything works, I simply plant these posts into Papier Mache or Plaster. But beware, the two are different in consistency. One has to be dry (Papier Mache) in order to have a successful result, the other instead, has to have already a solid consistency (somewhat still malleable), but not have dried out completely, since plaster is brittle once dry, and attempting to plant those posts in dry plaster can result in disaster and ruin an otherwise fine ground work.
Then I proceed with more or less the same procedure on the "barbed wire".
A word of caution here.
You must have "freed" the Barbed Wire from its fret beforehand and already formed it in a coil in order to do the aging and weathering, otherwise it won't work.
All that is needed after the work on the Barbed Wire is to attach it to the posts.
In some cases the wire was not just stretched between the posts, but casually placed on top of them, in others, it was a combination of the two (stretched and coiled). The double fixture was usually applied in zones where the wire served as a deterrent from wire cutters.
So, in the end, would I recommend this product? Absolutely!
It gave me lots of satisfaction in assembling it and working with it.
Besides, once in place, with all the aging and weathering, it really looks fabulous, just like the real thing, only in scale.
A very great product indeed!
Posted On: Sunday, May 7th, 2017 @ 5:20 pm