Hobby Lobby sells a metallic thread called "Coats Metallic." It has a twist of strands which appear to make it looks like twisted fence wire. I agree the barbs would be so small as to be difficult to produce on such a small scale.
Think about it. A strand of barbed wire is thinner than your finger. Look at the fingers of an HO scale figure. How thick are those?
You want a very fine filament wire. Unbraiding stranded copper wire and painting it silver (or rust) might be your best bet.
Or you could try this: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/804-4
Looks good in the picture, anyway.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
Get some window screen wire and rip off a strand or two. When it comes off, you should be able to see some specs that look like barbs where the cross wire was. Metal screen works best. It's still a little big for N scale, but might work OK.
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.
I've made barbed wire with copper wire and Woodland:
Here's my HowTo with pictures for the fence.
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
Welcome to the forums.
I believe Walthers lists barbed wire fence. I have seen comments that some folks paint it rust color to make it look old. I have never seen it to tell you what it looks like.
The problem with fence is that the wire is so small that in scale it would be almost invisible. Posts for most barbed wire fencing range from 2"-4" diameter tops, again not very large. I have split some toothpicks for my fence posts, but haven't stained them or installed them yet.
Good luck,
Richard
I am building a HO module for my railroad club. I need to build a fence around a section of field and was wondering if anyone had any ideas about how to model barb wire. I want to do more than just string thread along lumber to make it more realistic.
Thanks for any ideas!