* Hot glue gun and glue sticks
* Balsa wood (thin)
* Bamboo kebab skewers
* Sharp knife
* Superglue (gel, not liquid)
* Sand
* PVA glue
* Paints and brushes
* Material for bases
* Ruler
1) Prepare your bases. I used some plasticard. Cut it to strips about one inch (25mm) wide by six (150mm) long.
2) Place your knife on a round kebab skewer, and gently score a line in it every inch (25mm) or so. Snap along this line and tidy up as necessary. Do this until you have three or four pieces of skewer.
3) Take your thin balsa wood (use a thickness that look right to you), and cut strips of it that are 6" (150mm) long and about a quarter of an inch (6mm) wide.
4) Clear a space where you can leave glued things to set without the cat, wife, girlfriend, children, aliens or visitors trying to eat or decorate themselves with.
5) Place two pieces of cocktail skewer in the space you just cleared, and dab of small blob of superglue gel at one end of both, then lay one of your strips of balsa across both cocktail skewers. Leave to dry. Do be careful here. If you place the pieces too far from one another, they will not fit on your bases.
6) After a few minutes you can add another couple of blobs of superglue, and add a second balsa strip below the first. Leave to dry.
7) Glue a third piece of balsa between the two and leave to dry. If you want, you can add a fourth piece or even more.
8) Get the hot glue gun out and secure the ends of the skewers to the bases. By now they should look like Fig. 1.
9) Paint some PVA over the bases and scatter sand over it. Leave overnight to dry.
10) Paint some dilute PVA over the sand to secure it in place, and leave to dry.
11) Undercoat everything. See Fig. 2.
12) Paint the fences. I used progressively lighter greys for the wood, then progressively lighter browns for the earth. See Fig. 3. Once the paint is quite dry, you can add bits of grass and so on.
Although these were built with Wild West gaming in mind, they are quite suitable for various other things. You can see below an IG HW Team using them for cover, and do not be at all surprised if the British, French and German armies turn up behind them at some future date.
Bonus Music Video, folks. Enjoy!
