Split Rail Fencing

Here's a little break fom trying to reconstruct the Grant ACW rules. Now, I've some figures on order from Spencer Smith, but little terrain which you might recognise as being specifically North American in it's looks. Sure I've heaps of trees, but nothing that really cries out "America" to me. I had been considering buying one of the Perry plastic houses, but to me that's a bit of a cop-out. Terrain is easy to make, really, and for this sort of project, it really ought to be home-made.

It feels like the right thing to do.

Now for me, nothing says rural America the way split-rail fencing does. A quick Google search gave me a pretty good idea of the principles involved - it looked pretty simple and the materials were cheap. A trip to my local craft store yeilded a bag of 2000 match-sticks for $AU4.95 which really ought to be enough fencing for a lifetime. I calculate I could build almost 20 metres of fencing with this much material!

A picture tells the story of a thousand words, but I'd add to the images below that of course you'll need end-posts to slot the rails into - an ice-cream stick suitably cut down and perforated to take four of the match-sticks ends at one sticks' spacing would do. Note that the finished product will be fairly fragile if left free-standing and really needs to be built onto a base of either mounting board or really thin ply.

Spray the fencing tan or brown and dry-brush it with grey to imitate weathered timber and you ought to get the look you want. If you're really on your game you could distress the rails with craft knife and file for a more random look to the individual pieces.

I think this might look really good surrounding a crop made from coir matting or some short leafy stuff from the aquarium centre serving as maize/corn or tobacco and mounted on a roughly square base.