Sunday, April 17, 2016

To The Barricades!

Mar Omega is the creator of this brilliant technique for creating spiked wooden barricades* for LARP games.  They're painted pool noodles.  The one detail that isn't pretty self-explanatory from the image is how to get the paint to stick.  Pool noodles are made from polyethylene foam and almost nothing will bond with the plastic permanently.  At a guess I'd say they're coated in spray on Plasti Dip or truck bed liner. 


*Technically they're Cheval de frise, but that doesn't roll of the tongue nearly as well as "spiked barricade".

4 comments:

CoastConFan said...

It’s really amazing how prop makers are producing faux finishes on soft items. The only drawback to using swim noodles is the fact that you have to secure them to the ground so a wind doesn’t carry them away.

The Roman legions as a rule about set up a fortified camp for overnight security. For quick construction, legionnaires carried sharpened piece of wood called a sudis. They could be assembled into horizontal walls or a spiked barricade. Others carried additional implements for fortifications. The Romans were pros with fortified portable camps. On the few times they failed to “fort up” near their enemies, they were slaughtered when attacked at night.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudis_%28stake%29
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Roman-armies-carry-forts-around
http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/romans/equipment.html

A quote from The Jewish War by Josephus, Book III, Chap V – after all he was an eyewitness. “Those foot-men also that are chosen out from the rest to be about the general himself have a lance and a buckler, but the rest of the foot soldiers have a spear and a long buckler, besides a saw and a basket, a pick-axe and an axe, a thong of leather and a hook, with provisions for three days, so that a footman hath no great need of a mule to carry his burdens.. “

Download The Jewish War for free -- https://archive.org/details/jewishwaranewtr00josegoog and https://www.whitehorsemedia.com/docs/THE_WARS_OF_THE_JEWS.pdf

Anonymous said...

Spray the noodles with sprayon contact cement - we have kwik grip spray on in Oz. A light dusting will allow the paint to bond to the glue instead of the noodle surface.

Unknown said...

You could just order my tutorial. What isn't self-explanatory is the hardware.

Homoskeptic said...

Or you could paint on wood glue. That could even end up giving a wood-grain like texture!