Posted on Leave a comment

Making Concertina Wire

We’ve already taught you how to make barbed wire, but what do you do with it now? There are a lot of different barbed wire traps you can make to add variety to the battlefield,  but first up we’ll tell you how to make the classic concertina wire. This is very simple to make once you have the barbed wire, and you might just start coiling it without a second thought. There are a few interesting points to think about though, which can heavily impact the look of your concertina.

What size of roles should you make for starters? Real world concertina wire can vary considerably, but in games we find that normal concertina should come up to the waist of a standard model. If you are planning on using the wire for fence tops, you will want to go smaller.

The next question is how far apart should you pull the coils? Additionally complicating the question is the fact that real concertina is itself spread out as it’s emplaced. This leads to a wide range of scale in the real world since materials are frequently in short supply and often stretched more than they should.

The picture on the left was made with an open coil, while the right concertina was made with a much tighter coil. Keep in mind that the angle it is viewed from as well as the distance makes a very big difference in how it appears. What you go with will depend on what you want from your fortifications. Wide coils can cover much more distance than tight coils with the same amount of wire, so if you’re looking for the biggest return, you would easily choose open coils. On the other hand, tighter coils give you a dense and intimidating wall that covers less space. Some people prefer a tight coil because they think that it is closer to the actual concertina; others prefer a wider spread because it looks more open and therefore mimics the openness of the actual concertina.

Leave a Reply