Machine gun etiquette -- or how to make cooling jackets in 1/72

[yak face]

Ok heres a quick one for you. I recently came across a small problem whilst making a 1/72 Fiat G50 , namely the Breda Safat machine guns as fitted to this aircraft (plus a few other italians , and a similar looking MG on some japanese a/c too). The problem being , the machine gun has a perforated cooling jacket round the barrel , so difficult to mould in 1/72 that most manufacturers dont even bother , just giving you a smooth barrel. Now this bugged me , because the guns on the g50 are very prominent ,so i thought is there a way of at least making it look a bit like it should? What i came up with is this-- Get yourself some self adhesive Aluminium tape , its widely available at hardware shops etc.Next find a nail punch or centre punch (or indeed anything)with a Knurled shaft. On a firm surface , i used mdf, put a piece of the tape face up and ,pressing down hard, roll the knurled section over the tape. You should be left with a surface covered in regular indentations .Cut a small piece of this --for a 1mm dia barrel a strip about 3.5 mm should wrap around nicely (the formula for finding the circumference of a circle = Pi x the dia , remember your maths lessons!!?) I wrapped mine round a .75 dia piece of plastic rod , laying the tape piece sticky side up , carefully sticking the rod to one edge ,then rolling it up gently. It should give a cylinder with indentations , in this scale a near enough impression of a machine gun with a cooling jacket once painted and given a wash to highlight the indents. Sounds like a lot of messing i know but with a bit of practice its quite easy ,it may even work for larger scales. Heres some pictures to try and illustrate my ramblings ,, tony

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[Guest]

Nice one, Tony. I might give that a go myself. Good tip.

keith

[Guest]

nice idea Tony

I suppose you could also use this tip to make those vented heat jackets for some exhausts as well.

[yak face]

Cheers guys, you could adapt it to do all sorts i suppose , I just wanted something a bit better looking than the kit item. You can actually buy turned brass mg's from some guy in poland but at about £5 plus postage they would have cost me more than the kit,and its only a quick build anyway.The aluminium tape is very useful too , for instance i used it for the canopy frame of my CAC boomerang , cheers tony