"15mm Resin Tank Gun Problems?" Topic

After reading another post that mentions that long resin gun barrels are basically a lost cause, and reading other similar posts from time to time, I thought that I'd finally ask about this.

I started casting my own 15mm resin tanks somewhere around 1987, including resin barrels. Since that time, I've cast about 300 tanks with resin barrels for my own use, and another 300+ resin vehicles with resin MGs as primary armament. Most of my WWII vehicles have been used in a few hundred games, while many of my post war models have seen more like 70-100 uses.

In all of those uses, which amounts to thousands of exposures to possible breakage by the individual miniatures, I've ended up with roughly a dozen broken resin barrels, most have happened at conventions. I have far fewer metal castings with long barrels, also generally with far fewer uses than the resin models. I have experienced about twice as many broken barrels with metal, as I have with the resin.

Is my experience with resin barrels not typical?

I am curious to know what your experience has been. I greatly appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,

irishserb

I have zero experience with this, but some resins might have more flex than others. If the resin you use has a little more give than what someone else is using, theirs will break while yours does not.

My experience is less, but the results are similar. I'd say the metals are prone to bending, which the resin of course are not. I'd also be a little wary of long, thin resin barrels--an L3/33 with solothurn 20mm, for instance. But overall, I'd prefer the resin.

I haven't used a lot of them, but have seen they are prone to drooping over time, if not reinforced with a bit of thin, metal rod placed into the molds, before casting.

This seems to be especially true for longer, thinner barrels, and/or those with larger muzzle brakes at their tips.

Warped barrels have been my experience with resin. Small calibre guns in 15mm scale, like 2pdrs, break frequently regardless of them being metal or resin.

I forget the manufacturer, but they made high-quality, 1/76th scale, resin tanks.

They included brass rod in their guns, when casting them to reduce the chance for warping and breakage.

The resin seems to flow very nicely around the rod, when casting.

I suspect spring-steel and/or piano wire would do the same too, and probably be stronger, and less prone to being bent.

Another step when making minis, but seems like the payoff would definitely be worth it.

I much prefer metal barrels otherwise, to resin ones.

Thanks for the feedback.

I went downstairs and checked some of my older castings for bent barrels, and models that I know were cast between 1989-1995 all seemed to be fine, with no drooping. These were likely all cast with Alumilite resin, though some may have been from Vagabond resin. None of the newer models, likely to have been Vagabond seemed to have drooping problems either.

I do know that not getting a proper mix in the resin, can result in soft castings that are rubbery and tend to droop under their own weight, I've not purchased resin castings since the early 1990s were that happened, and hopefully have succeeded in discarding any of my own parts, when that has happened.

I do remember having a couple of Panther some years ago, that were sitting in the hatch of my car at Historicon in the sun, and the barrels got soft and drooped. I found that I was able to straighten them by dipping them in boiling water and holding the turret upside down and allowing the barrel to un-droop into its original position. Similarly, I have corrected new castings that were bent during de-molding with a hot air blower, again simply heating and holding the model such that gravity corrected the problem.

Also, I hadn't considered that some of the breakage might be due to particularly brittle resins, such as the polyester resins that I tired many years ago, that had a glass-like texture to them. I imagine those would be prone to pretty readily breaking, though I rarely encounter that type of resin.

I've experimented with brass and piano wire as barrels or supports in the mold, but casting them in radically slows my casting process down and slightly increases the frequency of miscasts, so I haven't adopted it as a standard practice. Additionally, I haven't had a large number of problems with resin barrels, so hadn't thought it worth the extra time.

Again, I appreciate the feedback, and would be happy to read about additional experiences that others might have had.

Thanks again.