RB Models 1/200 Scale Oerlikon Mk IIIA

[treadhead1952]

Hi All,


Being somewhat challenged when it comes to building up tiny weapons systems for my 1/200 scale ship models, I often turn to substitutions made from brass, aluminum or other materials that I am more familiar with from many years of styrene model building. I am more interested in making my models look more realistic than what I can do with a pure card model so I don't really sweat this issue. I also don't enter contests since I am more interested in doing this for my own enjoyment and really more often than not am working when these contests take place anyway. So all that being said, if you are into contests with stringent rules or no "Open" classes available to enter, this probably won't work for you and you would be better off sticking to the card model parts.

RB Models is a Polish firm that sells online and offers many different genres' of parts in addition to ship parts and weapons. Their prices are very reasonable when you consider what they offer, the cost for a 6 unit set of 20MM Oerlikon Mk IIIA mounts is $5.54 plus shipping. They also carry assortments of aluminum and brass barrels for a variety of other ship kits in many different scales, not to mention aircraft and armor weapons, fittings of various types and other odds and ends. You can visit their website here:

RB Model - home page

All that being said, working on my USS Selfridge in 1/200 scale from Gremir Models I found myself needing no less than 8 of these little jewels to replicate the number carried on the ship in her 1944 configuration. While the kit provides you with 4 of them in card and gives you a generic location arrangement, I had to do some digging to find where the remaining four were to go, but that is another story. A while back I purchased several of these little sets as well as some other items to make shipping worth while. Surprisingly, considering how far they had to come, service was most excellent arriving in under two weeks, so I can highly recommend them.

The sets come in two small plastic zip lock bags, one containing the six barrels and main conical mounting bases as well as a second even smaller bag that holds the Photo Etch fret with the rest of the parts. These are very high quality pieces and if you are familiar with putting together PE pieces with Cyanoacrylate Glue they really don't hold any mysteries. The site recommends that you don't try and solder the parts together as the brass is very fine for the sights, curved shoulder rests and such and just would probably melt down as you applied heat trying to solder them together. As it is, if you try and move the finer parts around more than the once or twice that is required to position them where they need to go, you do risk snapping them off. The major kit parts do give you a rather nice fold line where they need to be bent to position them for assembly so that is a plus.



Trimming out the four parts from the brass fret is simply a matter of slicing through the tiny gates where they are fastened to the main fret. I don't even try to trim the gates when cutting them out, saving that chore for after they have been freed from the fret. Once they are loose I can position them around on my cutting board and trim off the gate mounts with my hobby knife holding the parts down with a tweezers tip. Not doing this risks catapulting them off to the carpet monster, I know, mine is usually well fed with such things. Once trimmed up, folding the two parts that need to be folded up are accomplished with the tip of a hobby knife and holding them down with the tweezers tip again. After these two parts are folded up you can roll the magazine portion of the gun mounting part with the tweezers tips quite easily. After it is rolled up you can fill the opening up in the center with white glue to make it solid. Just be cautious as it does have some nice raised lines around the outside to make it look like the original.



Assembling the barrel to the gun carriage part with the magazine and sights on it is made easier as the rear of the gun barrel has a tiny raised part on the rear that fits into a hole in the rear of the carriage part. Dipping the back of the barrel into some CA glue in a small cap and then putting it in place and laying it down into the channel you make folding the sides and rear mounting tab up locks it into place handily. With the two side parts of the mount folded up and the two "Y" shaped bits of the mount folded back you have the part that is required to mount to the gun shield all ready to go. It is dipped into the CA glue and then positioned on to the shield part and let cure. The last part to be dealt with is the tiny conical mounting that gets glued on to the circular flat mounting plate that has a series of raised dots to represent the mounting bolts that hold the gun mount to the deck. The bottom of the conical part needs to be filed flat before you try to glue it to the base plate though. It has a tiny dimple on both ends from being turned and while the one on the top is needed to mount the gun shield part the one on the bottom is not. Having reduced your parts count by half in assembling the parts to this point simplifies matters. With the conical base assembled, gluing the gun shield to it is next. Once the parts have had a chance to cure for a moment attaching the barrel and carriage to the shield and mount is the last thing to do.



While a brush can be used to paint this little assembly, an air brush is a much better proposition. Just set it on low and chose your paint. Once it is painted up and dry, mounting to your model gives you a much more convincing part than can be made up with card, at least as far as I am able to produce. While I have seen many other more talented card modelers able to produce many various weapon mounts, doing so with such a tiny thing as the 20MM Oerlikon single mount is pretty difficult, using RB Models set eliminates one more thing from my list of near impossible parts to produce.

[RAFleischman]

Nice write-up Jay.

What was the shipping cost to the US?

I'm almost done with the 20mm guns for Salt Lake City (I've been working on them for the past week, 3 more to go!), but I may try these guys on a future build.

russ...

[treadhead1952]

Hi Russ,

As I recall, I spent about $80 on goodies and it ran around $10 for shipping to me. The package was a large manila envelope that had the parts stapled to cardboard liners, wrapped in plastic bubble type wrap material. I had more fun digging the stuff out of it once I got it free from the wrapping. He has added some 40MM Bofors barrels to his listing so I may have to make up another order once I get back to work and am off disability pay. I sacrificed a couple of sets of other barrels to rob the 40MM Bofors barrels for my USS Selfridge.

I learned to order enough stuff to make shipping worthwhile when ordering from overseas. My recent order from GPM in Poland was around $30 for the stuff and cost $9 and change for shipping.

[treadhead1952]

Hi All,

One of the reasons for me to be posting this thread originally was that I had purchased a Photo Etched set that was supposedly made to produce 20MM Oerlikon Single Mounts from GPM under the Hobby Factory name. What you got was a single Photo Etch fret and a single page photo type instruction sheet that just had the part numbers pointing to photos of the model set assembled. I took one look at it and decided that like card models, some things were better left alone and a substitute looked for.

While I am sure that some dedicated modeler could probably produce an appropriate looking gun mount from this set, that was probably not me. I have decided that I will probably use some of the parts from this set to add some things to my 20MM Oerlikon mounts like the tiny adjusting wheel that mounts to the side of the conical base part or the front and back of the magazine which is a rolled up side part on the RB Models set that I have been filling with glue and letting it get painted over. There are probably other things that I may wind up using the tiny parts for but they won't be getting assembled into their original purpose.






Has anyone tried making these little guys up? I would be interested in seeing one put together to see how they compare to the six part RB Models entry into this category. But trying to put 22 tiny brass parts into a micro assembly like this would lead to some interestingly glued parts attached to me and my digits, I am sure

[Don Boose]

This is an excellent, informative, and very useful writeup, Jay. Many thanks for providing all this information.

Don