Negan - Prepwork IIC: Lucille, pt. 3 - Barbed Wire!

I am going to give "Lucille" one more day to "relax" and settle into her new finish; but in the meantime, there is quite a bit of work to be done. . . 

As I indicated earlier, I settled for Hudson & Allen's barbed wire (HA9401). This is, quite simply, a SUPERB product! It is mixed-media: scale-thin 2-wire strands with interlaced "vinyl" barbs [As a sidebar note, the barbs are visually quite realistic--and safe. One could argue that, given time, a more realistic item could have been scratchbuilt, but my days of making mail quickly dispelled any such notion. . .  The bw is nicely finished in an earthy rust, which means that in most in- stances, it is ready to use right out of the package!

This is not one of those instances. Personally, I think the bw is depicted as a bit too clean on TWD. But, that is canon, and so it must be. So my first step after very gingerly unwinding a length of the wire, and straightening it out (which is when I discovered H&A used metal wire for the strands), was dropping it in the "bath" overnight. By this afternoon, the paint was easily removed with light scrubbing: the bw is now ready for application!

More to follow. . .  

UPDATE 14.04.17. . . "Lucille" is DONE!!! And I am very pleased! 

The whole process took less than 10 minutes--including unwrapping the wire a couple of times to tweak the flow of the coils! I will be the first to admit that the wire is slightly over-scaled; but, aes- thetically, it rocks! Especially once the blood, etc. is applied during final finishing. I may go back and trim some of the barbs ever-so-slightly to reduce the effective diameter of the barrel; but it is way too early to make that decision now.

BACK TO THE BENCH!!!

“When the cost of a hobby exceeds the fun and doesn't attract new people, the game is over.” -
Oscar Koveleski, August 2003