"Does anyone do accurate plastic artillery?" Topic

By my calculations a French Gribeauval 12-pounder should have a 31mm barrel and 20mm diameter wheels, and the limber should have 13mm diameter wheels.

Even the usually helpful PSR doesn't state the measurements of the various plastic guns. Has anyone on here bought any, and measured them for scale accuracy?

In what scale? I'm guessing 15mm?

1:72/20mm if PSR is any sort of clue.

Interesting question.

Phil

Yes, that sort of scale.

Taking, illustratively, the Airfix British line infantry, these are around 23mm in height allowing for where the tops of their heads would be. So if they're 5'5" or 5'6", they scale out pretty well at 1/72. The French are 1/76 by the same method.

A Gribeauval 12-pounder gun tube was 231cm long. I think this excludes the cascabel. So it should be 32mm long in 1/72, or just over 30mm in 1/76. I can live with either as plastics are not all the same height.

When you scale plans of a Gribeauval tube so it's 30mm long, the gun wheels come out at 20mm diameter, near enough, and the limber wheels at 13mm.

So that's where I am getting my dimensions from. Rather than hunt down and buy every possible model to find out which is most accurate I figured I'd ask here.

The Art Miniaturen models look lovely but they aren't cheap and I have no way of knowing their size.

Having stood next to a French 12-pounder, it is a hulking great beast, and I don't want mine undersized…

FWIW, not plastics, I bought some samples of Elite Miniatures 6pdrs [and an Austrian 3] and they're massive compared to other old manfrs pieces.
Could probably 'serve' for what you want, if you want measurements I can do to the nearest mm.
d

4th Cuirassier, are you looking at any artillery sets of all nations or is this meant to be a more specific question. ie are you asking about the French 1/72 guns specifically?

Italeri/Esci Imperial French set. Wheels are just over 21mm. The barrel is just over 28mm not including the cascabel. HaT french limber wheels are 14mm diameter

HaT French Horse Artillery have guns with wheel dia 18mm. gun barrels are just over 21mm but these a but this I believe is a 4pdr.

Zvezda is the best. They have French and Russian. There are two sets of Russian, light and heavy. The French set comes with 8# and 12#. Out of production for now, but you can still pick them up on Amazon or ebay.

Nothing else even compares.

Thanks for the hard data, especially Neilad. The Italeri tube you describe sounds like it could be a 1/72 8-pounder. IIRC these were 201cm long to the 12-pounders 231cm, so 201/231 x 32mm gets you 28mm.

I am thinking these could be my answer, with HaT limbers and maybe Art Miniaturen crews. Yes, it's the French where there's a problem.

@ Widowson, I hear you, but that Zvezda set has just sold for £40.00 GBP on the 'bay. That pays for quite a few metals…!

@ SHaT1984 – yes, I have noticed this too. Somewhere in my metals stash, I have nominally 28mm French 8-pounder guns from several manufacturers, and they look oddly dissimilar. Annoyingly, when you compare them to scale plans of Gribeauval pieces, you'd need the barrel from one, the wheels from another and the carriage from yet another. Gets expensive.

I have the Zvezda set. The gun wheels as just under 20mm and the barrels are 29mm and 25mm respectively. These are stated to be 12 and 8 pdrs I believe. The limber wheels in this set are 16.5mm in diameter.
I also have the 1805 HaT French set and the barrel on these is 30.5mm and the wheels 22.5mm

So there are some variances between different sets.

can have a look at Hagen Miniatures 1/72

link

Try Amazon for Zvezda. You never know. They may reissue them at some later date.

I checked Amazon and ebay. They both have French and Russian artillery sets for sale.

The trouble is that Zvezda does two completely different sets of French artillery, the one that's just gone for £40.00 GBP (8028) on the 'bay, and the other one, that's £5.55 GBP on Amazon (6018). The former has three eleven-part guns, crews and limbers, the latter one simplified gun and a crew.

I need 12 or 13 gun models and limbers but I don't really want to pay £40.00 GBP for one Zvezda box only to find I can't get hold of any more than that.

4th Cuirassier. if resin figures are ok with you we can do the guns the size you are looking.