GHQ Models Forums

One of the things that have really bothered me about 1/285th miniatures is the durability, especially of infantry and gun barrels. I attack the problems of flaking paint and bent gun barrels in several ways. I prime the vehicles, scratch build the gun tubes, protect the finish with several flat coats, and protect the models with storage boxes from I-94 Enterprises.
I have gotten tired of bent gun tubes, especially since about half of my collection is CinC with the "scale" gun barrels (read thin and flimsy). I especially don't like how the paint flakes off the abused parts. I have been rebuilding my collection with brass gun tubes. Brass stock is easy to find at hobby stores, easy to cut (fingernail clippers!), and I carve muzzle brakes out of super glue. I simply dip the end of the barrel into a drop of super glue, put a drop of accelerator on it, then dip it again etc. until I get a good size drop of hardened glue on the end. I then mount the barrel in a hobby vice and use hobby files to carve the blob into a cylinder. Next I use a sharp edged file to cut notches or shape the muzzle brake further. After painting, I use a fine point permanent marker to portray vents and the hole at the end of the muzzle.
Sleeves on a barrel can be replicated using white glue, tape, or aluminum foil wrapped around the brass rod. I know this sounds time consuming, but it really isn't. I concentrate on the worst offenders a platoon at a time, or any new blisters I buy. I've got a group of Nashorns with gun tubes that looked like small silver worms that now look rather deadly with their long, straight 88L71s!

Any pictures?

Since I began mounting all my vehicles on metal bases and using magnetic lined boxes (only on the bottom surface of the box) I have not broken or bent a barrel. I also use bees wax to secure the turret which remains flexible enough to allow rotation if needed, but in the GHQ rules scale games we play now turret rotation isn't necessary.

Careful handling by players is the real cure to bent and broken gun barrels... I know that's really difficult at conventions or games where people who don't have figures of their own participate. In the training we do with the military we have only had a few items damage simply by asking them to be careful when handling the figures.

Will

I haven't had too many problems with bent "main gun" barrels. Drooping, yes, but not really bent.

But I have had so many problems with .50 cals bending or popping off that I've given up trying to mount them. Of course the model is not correct at that point but better incorrect than mutilated.

Since I don't glue my turrets in place I found that spinning the turret where the barrel is over the engine deck greatly reduces the barrels bending. A little "drooping" but not much beyond that.

you could always SNIP the barrels Lets hope that doesn't start the furor that occured on the "other" forum when that topic came up

Snip off the barrels? Not on MY Micro-Armor, you don't!

I've never known a tanker who didn't decry the need to perform periodic maintenance after each run-about.

[best George C. Scott voice]
Suck it up, soldier! You get paid to play God in your nation's finest thunder-machines! Getting your fingernails dirty is just the price of admission.
[/best George C. Scott voice]

Or, as might be better for a discussion here amongst polite company...

I am fully resigned to performing periodic maintenance on my micro-armor. It goes through a visual inspection before, and after, any battle. I have a special pair of tweezers that are just spot-on magic at straightening barrels, and are at the same time quite handy for picking the little-bitty pieces (like fallen HMGs or open-top vehicle crew figures) out from between the ditrious of a successful wargame battle (the bits of lichen, sand, and cheetos crumbs that litter my battleboards). I keep a tube of gelled superglue in my gaming tools box with the dice and fire-yarn.