How-to Tuesday: Long Gunner Barrels

Plarzoid

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a look at the Long Gunner models, but they’re classic Privateer Press models. One piece, loads of detail. However, like everything else, they have some fiddly bits.

They have these huge rifle barrels, because they’re … well… LONG gunners, after all. I recently picked up a full unit (and UA) and much to my surprise, when I opened the box, all of them had bent barrels. Just kidding, I wasn’t surprised. The barrels are plenty thick, but pewter is a rather soft metal, and the barrels just can’t take the weight of the whole rest of the model when they’re bouncing around in the box.

So, I took the worst one I had, and took some pictures of my quick and dirty barrel replacement procedure. If you’ve see me do Iron Fang Pikemen lance shafts, then this will be nothing new.

I clipped off the barrel at the end of the stock. There’s a little band that wraps around the barrel, fastening it to the stock there, so it creates a nice, flat plane and lets us cover the joint between the model and the new barrel.

I again used my 3/64″ brass rod from K&S, and made a replacement barrel by rolling the rod under the blade of my X-Acto knife.

Once that was cleaned up, I went back to the model, and drilled a hole for my 20 GA pinning wire (with a #66 drill bit). The old model’s barrel took up the majority of the space inside the stock, and was oblong in its profile. I don’t know if this was by design or just how the molds work, but I placed my pin hole just above center on the end of the rifle stock, hoping it would line up with the top of the barrel on the rest of the gun.