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.
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.
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.
Hope this helps.
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![swg]
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 dia
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.