I am at that point, already have Walthers which is plastic, Micron Art, brass and Alloy Forms. In reverse order the Alloy Forms are nice but trying to glue the mesh on without messing it up is a challenge and they only have a top pole. The micron Art looks nice from the get go, their poles are weird but peice of piano wire should fix that, fence not wide enough for rail traffic, guess I could cut it out of the regular fence stuff. The walthers is plastic with glue on wires and fabric. Just thinking out loud here, hoping to get feedback from others with what they used.
I've only used the Walters stuff, and not much of that. I like the poles and gates. The mesh is just fabric, tulle, as I recall, the stuff used for bridal veils. The top poles are metal. So you"ve got plastic, metal and fabric. Yeah, I put it all together with CA, and spray first with aluminum silver rattle can, and then with a flattener. I made a jig with 1x4 wood, drilling holes for the vertical poles.
I like the results. But, it's a lot of work for a foot or so of fence.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Luke Towan on Youtube has an excellent video about chain link fence. He uses brass wire and vail material. His video quality is so good it's worth watching even just for entertainment.
https://youtu.be/0_guMOYoCpw
Matt
I made a tutorial a few months ago on my YouTube channel that while similar to Luke Towan's, I think is a bit easier to follow. The needed materials are listed in the description on YouTube, and should be easy to find in the US.
https://youtu.be/4-IbfwNxsHo
Hope this helps.
Harrison
Homeschooler living In upstate NY a.k.a Northern NY.
Modeling the D&H in 1978.
Route of the famous "Montreal Limited"
My YouTube
Chain link fence brand? How about scratch-built? With even a sliding gate?
All photos may be clicked on for a larger view:
The entire fence and sliding gate were designed to be removeable, hence the need for the longer posts. They fit in holes drilled into the layout top base, which is Homasote.
Take Care!
Frank
I very recently started to tackle that part of my scenery. I just bought some from Woodland scenics for two very shorts lengths. They look nice to my eye. I just added a bit of rust on them. I've never really thought of doing my own - but I'm not sure I could have achieved the results shown above. Nice job guys!
Simon
I needed several LLoooooonnngg runs of chain link fencing for my HO scale layout. I found that a hybrid fence starting with the Walthers kit was the way to go. The Walthers kit provides good looking vertical fence pools with top extensions for barbed or razor wire. Unfortunately, the kit provides several lengths of flimsy florist wire for the horizontal poles and this stuff bends just by looking at it cross-eyed! Since I needed fence lengths as long as six feet (about 520 HO scale feet), I decided to purchase 36" lengths of 0.020" piano wire for use as the upper and lower horizontal poles. I start by carefully drilling 0.020" holes through the vertical fence poles at the upper and lower "sleeve" points. DO NOT remove the fence posts from the parts sprue until after you drill all the holes as the sprue will help you hold the fence posts steady while drilling. Mark the fence post positions on appropriate lengths of piano wire. I like the look of fence posts spaced 10 scale feet apart. Remove the Walthers fence posts from the sprues and carefully remove any flash. Next, thread the fence posts onto the marked lengths of piano wire. Be sure to work on a large flat surface to make sure the fence stays straight. Once all of your fence posts are in their marked positions and are perpendicular to the piano wire, glue the fence posts to the wire using CA. Trial fit the fence frame on your layout and drill holes for the fence posts. Make any bends needed in your fence at this time.
Once the fence frame is complete and trial fit to the layout, return to the work area and apply the fabric tulle. I like to first mist the tulle with flat black spray paint. This make it easier to see when you cut it, especially when your work surface has a light color. The tulle is a bit too flimsy to cut long lengths with a hobby knife and straight edge so I don the old magnifying visor and cut each individual diamond. Yeah, this takes a LOT of patience but the final results look very neat, clean and super realistic! I cut the tulle wide enough that the diamonds just barely extend above the top horizontal tube and maybe a row or two below the bottom tube. With the tulle trimmed to size, I next apply a thin coat of PSA (pressure sensitive adhesive I purchased from Micro Mark) to one sie of the fence frame. Once this glue is dry to a tacky surface, you can apply the tulle just by pressing it into the PSA. As it is already partly dry, the PSA cannot seep into the tulle and fill in complete diamonds like other types of liquid glue can and do. Add a small drop of CA anywhere you think your fence needs more strength but be careful not to fill in any of the tulle diamonds.
Use EZ-Line telephone pole line to make your barbed wire. I used plain thread on my earlier fences but found that the thread can sag and collect dust over time. I again used the Micro Mark PSA glue to place and position the thread/EZ-Line, adding small drops of CA where needed.
With your fence construction complete, spray the entire fence with "aluminum" colored paint for a new fence or light gray flat primer for an older fence. I used Pan Pastels to weather my fences. Here are a few shot of the fence I built for the racetrack perimeter.
The first shot shows the fence to the left of a main highway. The second shot shows the entry gate from the highway side while the third shot shows the racetrack side of the entry gate. As this property is supposed to be near the ocean, I heavily weathered the fence with rust colors.
Hornblower
Well got a lot of projects going on but added extentions to the Micron Art brass etched ones and painted a section flat black as an undercoat. Looks great and anything that looked weird in brass finish looks much better. Know to get the relisim I need to paint it a final color but was considering gray instead of silver since veiwing is from middleground instead of foreground. What you think. Desided to go with this brand as it is easiest to construct, fiqued if this failed muster could move on to the next idea.