Barriers

The Crash barrier is made from 6mm (1/4 inch) wooden square section and a wooden moulding available from Wicks that looks like scale Armco. To save time I made my mitre block into a jig by taping some blocks of wood onto the jig so I could use my razor saw to cut all the fence posts to the same size.

It is all glued together with PVA glue then onto a plywood base with the hot glue gun. They are finished off by undercoating with Brilliant White Vinyl Matt (water based) paint, then overcoated with more white, green emulsion or grey acrylic undercoat that looks like concrete.

There is no need to buy large pots of paint. When you only need a small amount of paint you can buy a small "testor" pot. I prefer water based paint as the brushes are easier to clean, the paint is easier to "water down" and no harmful solvent is released when it dries. This is important if you plan to paint in an enclosed space eg. your bedroom.

The safety barrier is made in the same way with the addition of some "Plastic Canvas" spray painted silver (which actually looks grey!). I found the plastic mesh in a local craft shop on special offer so I got a number of sheets.

If you don't think the mesh is realistic enough, try aluminium mesh intended for supporting car body filler. It has a finer mesh and it is automatically silver in colour. However it comes in small sheets and cost quite a lot.

After a bit of research I found that the overhang comes over the track as it is to stop stuff coming off the track and landing on the crowd. Fences the other way around are to stop people eg. around factories etc.

To produce a perfect joint the two pieces of wood could have been cut at 22.5 degrees each to produce the 45 degree overhang. However a mitre gauge only (usually) has a 45 degree angle. So I cut one piece to 45 degrees, glued them together then trimmed off the surplus with the razor saw and file.