I’ve been making Stablemate scale (1:32) fencing and bases for a while now… but I got the itch to see if I could make some micro mini setups!

Thus, this post will cover how to make a simple grass base with attached fencing in scale with Breyer Mini Whinnies. For a small moment I played around with the idea of trying to make removable fencing (like I do with the large scale) and then common sense kicked in…

A lot of this will be a little repetitive if you’ve read my previous fencing or base-making posts, so please bear with me. And as always, click for larger photos! 🙂

Tools

To assemble these fences, I am using Liquitex white gesso (Basic and Professional), Liquitex Matte Varnish, a ruler, a mechanical pencil, sandpaper, Elmer’s wood glue, a x-acto handle with a Razor Saw Blade (52 teeth per inch) and a x-acto miter box.

If you don’t have any of these tools, the initial supplies will cost a bit, but after that fencing is pretty cheap to make. It’s the labor that’s the hard part!

I use basswood when I build props (fences and cavaletti) because balsa wood is both more fragile and more grainy. Even though you have to use a saw to cut it, save yourself the headache and use basswood!

Making the Wooden Fencing

Wooden fencing is normally made of posts that are four or six inches wide and boards that are six inches wide and up to sixteen foot long. The installation guides for most recommend the posts be set between eight and twelve feet apart and that the fence should be roughly five feet high. (The height of the fence depends more on how likely the horse is to go over it than anything else.)

Translating that to 1:64 scale is really easy, thanks to the internet. I just hopped over to this Scale Conversion Calculator and popped in the measurements.

A six inch post would be 0.09 scale inches, which is roughly 3/32 (0.09375). Thankfully my local hobby store is insane enough to carry this size! To keep things in line with my other fencing, I’m making the posts  an inch tall, which would be 5.33 feet tall (64 inches).

The boards should be the same size, but sadly the closest the hobby store had was 1/8 which would be 8 inches wide– not too far off. I did a test fit and they looked okay, so time to assemble!

The smallest wooden base that I had was a 4×4 square with a 3.25 inch square surface area, which leaves plenty of room for a micro performance setup. Eight feet in 1:64 scale is 3.81 inches, so I’m able to inset the two posts 1/8th of an inch from each corner and have it look good. I went with a simple three board fence to start with, so I cut two posts at 1 inch tall and three boards at 3.25 inches.

Remember to sand the boards before assembly! You can do some light sanding after it’s assembled (and the glue has dried for 24 hours) but I’d recommend doing it beforehand.

If you are going to stain the boards, do it before assembly, but don’t paint them. Wood glue is better than superglue here because it takes a few minutes to set properly, which lets you move the boards if they need adjusting, but it doesn’t like holding painted pieces together.

These are tiny tiny pieces of wood, so to hold things still for assembly I put some rubber cement down on my cutting board and let it dry for a few minutes. Rubber cement will remain tacky for quite a while and rubs right back off the wood when you’re done.

Spacing between the boards is purely cosmetic, there are lots of difference fence designs out there, so once you have the basics down you can get creative!

Once the fence is assembled, set it aside for a day to dry so it’s nice a sturdy before you attach it to the base.

Speaking of which…

Making the Base

The instructions for making the wooden grass bases are already covered in this blog post, so I won’t repeat it here! 🙂

The only difference is that since the fencing is being glued to the base, I did that step after the fence and base were painted but before adding the grass.

I used an ArtMinds square wooden plaque that was a 4×4 square with a 3.25 inch square area on stop. I eyeballed the position of the fencing, so you can see in the photos it was just a smidge off. (Arg!)

It took a lot of tweaking to get the fence upright and in position, so I’d highly recommend using something to brace it with while it dries. Do not use super glue to attach as it will prevent the tweaking!

In theory you could add the fencing after you do the grass, by scraping off the grass, but that seems like a lot of work. I have retrofit bases before to have fencing, so it’s definitely not impossible.

In the end it all turned out much better than expected! I sent the base out as a freebee to go with Key Lime Limbo and it got rave reviews from the new owner. Now I just have to make another tiny little fence template and I can throw a few more up in the Etsy store! 🙂

That’s All She Wrote!

Have any questions? Ask them over on my Facebook page and I’ll be happy to answer! 😀