Reviewed by Timothy Dike
| One of the most eye catching upgrades you can add to a kit is Machined Metal Gun Barrels. Injection molding and even resin casting falls short of reproducing the perfectly round barrels. Turning them on a lathe will ensure that they are truly round. Do this with a CNC and you can repeat those results and produce sets of barrels that are exactly the same. Regia Marina has recently added this set of 152 mm (6") and 381 mm (15") guns barrels for the Italian Vittorio Veneto class such as the new one from Delphis. These are also perfect for the Axis Roma. | ||||||
| The guns are machined out of aluminum and are extremely sharp. The ends are center drilled for a hollow appearance. The tapers of the barrels are very distinct. I don't have much in the way of plans for Italian Navy subjects, so I can't comment on accuracy, but they do look good, especially fitted in a turret, such as these from the Axis Roma. |
to enlarge |
|||||
 |
||||||
|
||||||
| The set includes 12 of these barrels. They are available by themselves as set #AF045 1/350 152 mm x 12 for 18,00 euros (about $21.75 US). That's less than 1.5 Euros ($1.81) a barrel, a great price! You can also get these as part of a complete twenty one gun Battleship set #AF047 with nine 381 MM guns and 12 of these 152 mm gun barrels for 40,00 euros (about $48.34 U.S. dollars). |  |
|||||
 Conclusions:
Regia Marina has been including machined barrels in many of their kits for quite some time, it is nice to see them offered separately for modelers wanting to upgrade their kits. More information can be found on the Regia Marina website. You can buy these online at distributors such as Pacific Front Hobbies or wherever fine ship model accessories are sold. |
||||||
