Fences from Leftovers

Fences can be used to hide imperfections on your layout or to create scenic blocks that bring one scene to a close and to open new scenes to the viewer. There a lot of premade fence materials available, however I believe some of the most interesting fences can be built from leftover materials.  One thing that a scratch built fence will give you over prefabricated fences is that you can create your fence lines to your exact dimensions.

Stone Walls

You can create this fence from a leftover piece of stone embossed sheet and cardboard. Embossed paper sheet for various materials can be found online. To add some rigidly you will want to use a cardboard backing. When using these walls closer to the edge of the layout or when both sides will come into view make sure that you use the embossed paper on both sides. Other than that you can just paint the back side a dark shade and call it a day.

I once read an article where the author cut out randomly sized stone shapes out from Strathmore board, painted them, and then glued them to some cardboard backing for a very nice affect.

Corrugated Fence

Corrugated material can be found in polystyrene, paper and metal foil. You can usually find it in these materials in the same places as the paper stone sheet, or suppliers like Campbell Scale Models, Evergreen ScaleModels and Rusty Stumps. 

I have bits of leftover corrugated material like that is found in Campbell structure kits. These metal foil odds and ends can be brought together to create a corrugated fence that will have the aspect of a fence that has been thrown together with whatever materials that were at hand.

Make sure you give the corrugated material a good undercoat before assembling. I usually paint these sections of corrugated material using a grey spray paint. In fact, this is the only method I have had success with painting this material. Let this base coat thoroughly cure before weathering.

Cut in various sizes or in a scale 3 by 6 feet, the normal width and height of corrugated material. Glue these sections to a cardboard backing with a bit of overlap, work left to right, and weather with pastel chalks to represent rust and grime.

Wood Fences

Wood fences can be created out of left-over bits strips of scale lumber, scribed wood or plastic sheet or even Strathmore board. Although using random width boards, either out of polystyrene or wood on a built up frame will take some time, this process will create a very realistic looking fence sections. You could leave out sections of the fence and even breaks a few the boards here and there for a more dilapidated look.

Distress the plastic or wood sheet with a piece of fine sandpaper or a hobby knife. Be careful here, you don’t want to scrape or cut too deeply into the plastic sheet. You do the same with the Strathmore board, but even more carefully. You for the fear of tearing the board don’t want to dig too deeply into the Strathmore board with the sandpaper.