Ships' Gun Barrels: Roll Your Own?

[Sakrison]

I have GPM's Prince of Wales and Bismarck and the brass/steel gun barrel sets from Gomix.

I've built a couple of main turrets (Thank you, Digital Navy!) and I think I prefer rolling my own barrels. I scan the kit parts, print them on 24-pound paper, double the width of the unrolled part to give it the proper thickness when it's rolled, then carefully roll my own barrels. I finish them off by coating the inside of the barrel with brushable ACC and painting inside of the muzzle with Model Masters Aluminum.

The color match isn't perfect, but it wouldn't be perfect with painted steel barrels, either.

I'm wondering if you ship modelers have a preference for using the turned barrels or rolling your own, and why.

No worries (except for this honking big hull sitting on my workbench!),
--David

[eibwarrior]

It depends. Several factors really. Scale, barrel type and kit.

In the smaller scales I tend to use replacement barrels because my rolling at small scale isn't the best. It's something I'm working on, but not right now (1/100 Arizona). Sometimes I roll my own if the kit barrels look poor, but I almost always use a former tube, either aluminum or pvc. But as you do, I will paint the muzzle for a more realistic look.

[Gharbad]

I haven't built many ships, but so far my barrels have been coming out very poorly. I used whatever paper the kit came on, and that was one of the problems; the colour layer of the paper would start disintegrating.
Then again, that was old paper and I have improved a lot since then, so I think I'd do a bit better nowadays.
I don't think I'll ditch rolling my own, purely because I like to build everything. I'm not in this for accuracy.

[Lex]

I always roll barrels, with the thinnest paper I can get, and rolled across the fibre direction. They come out as good as the human eye's concerned

[B-Manic]

I've never used turned barrels. I use David's (Sakrison) method except I make the insides of the barrels black.

[barry]

card it's cheap but I print a lot of spare barrels anything below 4" is wire or nails

[APA-168]

I use brass or I plunder from a plastic kit. I model a lot in small scales (cheap) and I can always grab stuff from my spares box. I've never tried building anything really big (no 1:200 BBs yet) so it might be easier in really large scales, but in 1/400 it's just too fiddly to roll something so small.

[jimkrauzlis]

I normally scan my models to print out in 1/600 scale, so I usually print an extra sheet where parts are to be rolled, such as barrels, masts, etc., on bond paper.

When I build up the rolled part, depending on the final thickness required, I usually cut out the part with an extra length of blank tab so that I can roll it into a good tube and then line up the printed part for the final diameter required.

Sometimes on bigger parts I'll roll an inner tube of plain bond scrap cut into a strip the width for the part. Then I roll the inner tube until it is about the right diameter of the finished piece and then take the outter printed part from the kit and wrap it around the inner tube.

In rolling the parts I find it helps to roll into a tube in a diameter that is slightly larger to start with, to impart the curve into the strips, and work my way into smaller tubes gradually until the roll is just about the right diameter, before using glue to finish the tube. I use a few different things to roll tubes, mostly knitting needles and various diameter brass rods. I have also found that trying to roll right into the smaller tubes sometimes causes a problem with the card or paper, distortion, wrinkles, etc., so gradually working the strips into tubes seems to work best for me.

I finish both off using acrylic paints to hide the exposed white edges of the paper. I find it difficult to roll the heavier card into a tube without some degeneration of the printed surface by either the rolling operation or the application of the glue. In smaller barrels and tubes I replace the paper with wire which, at 1/600 scale is quite often particularly with smaller masts and smaller gun barrels.

Hope this might be of some use.

Cheers!
Jim