Turned metal gun barrels for aircraft models replace the kit's styrene parts with precisely machined copies whose muzzles are drilled open. Armament is one of the most conspicuous areas of any fighter or bomber, and it is exactly where injection moulding runs out of breath. The range covers hundreds of brass-turned sets, from cabinet-scale 1:144 up to substantial 1:24. The guide below explains how to recognise the set that will actually fit the kit on your bench.
1:48 Aero L-39 Albatros - Pitot Tubes
5.56 €
1:48 Aero L-29 Delfin - Pitot Tubes
5.16 €
1:48 Republic P-47D Thunderbolt - Browning .50 blast tubes, gunsight and Pitot Tube
9.56 €
1:48 Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer - Pitot Tube and Refueling Probe
6.76 €
1:72 Gloster Meteor - Pitot Tube F.8 F.1 F.9 T.7 F.4 PR.10 F.3 F.I NF.11 / NF.12
3.96 €
1:48 Boeing B-17F/B-17G Flying Fortress - machine gun set - Browning M2 aircraft .50 caliber barrels
23.96 €
A turned barrel has a genuinely drilled muzzle, crisp cooling-jacket edges and a perfectly circular section that no mould achieves on a part under a millimetre thick. Styrene barrels often arrive bent and break while you clean the seam. The metal part ends that: cut the styrene barrel off, drill the hole, seat the new one on a drop of cyanoacrylate. Alongside machine gun and cannon barrels this category also holds pitot tubes, gunsights and weapon fairings supplied in combined detail sets.
Changing the barrels is one of the simplest ways to make a visible difference, which is why it suits modellers only a little way past their first build. A sharp knife, a pin vice and cyanoacrylate cover it. Combined sets with a gunsight and a Venturi tube ask for more patience as the small parts go in.
Buy barrels in the same scale as the kit. The widest choice sits in 1:72 barrels and detailed 1:48 barrels, large airframes are served by 1:32 and 1:24, and cabinet miniatures by 1:144.
The simplest items are muzzle tips alone, pushed onto a shortened styrene part. Complete sets add whole weapons, a gunsight, a pitot tube or a refuelling probe. Watch for sets cut around one particular kit: the description names the kit they were drawn for, and on another one the fit may not be exact.
Turned barrels are the small thing that decides the look in a cabinet and on a competition table. Pick the set for your machine and find a good starting point for it among the aircraft model kits.
