Tabletop fences and walls

Hello Everyone!

This is the first tutorial I did for the website back in the day. My modelling skills were still developing (well, they still are!) and so was my English. Be kind and try to appreciate what’s hidden between the (poorly written) lines. 🙂

This is a simple way of making scenery, using (almost) only vinyl glue (PVA), balsa wood and sand. To make simple barricades you just need those ingredients, and an evening, maybe while watching a nice B-grade action movie, where the looking is appreciated but not required.

Anyway, let’s start with the tutorial! Starting from some balsa wood, brushed with a metal brush to highlight the woodlines:

I cut the balsa into some strips, approx 3 cm x 5mm:

Some other strips, around 1 mm thick, will do for the support beams.

Glued together to make some 6-7 pieces long fences: this allows you to give some integrity before actually building the fences.

Then merged and glued on some card support:

For the ground, I added some small rocks and some corn flour, for the ground

Finally, I glued some more “patches”, to give more variety to the different pieces:

For the painting, a black primer and a rough brown coat:

For the ground, brown – to – white drybrush, to give an excessive contrast (good with the grass, imho). Then, for the wood, drybrush (not too dry) with orange, mixed with brown.

Finished with some white, for the aging:

Then, the grass, to give the complete nordic-style orkish architecture.

Conclusions: this method for making walls is fast, easy to learn and gives a nice way to understand the hidden power of the balsa wood. After you did something like that you can start more ambitious projects, such as whole balsa buildings or – as I did – some wooden engines and machinery!

Hope it will be useful to all of you!

The Lazy One