Leman Russ Kartvelian Variant, Part 2: the Gatling Cannon

The Leman Russ Kartvelian Variant comes in all flavors but this one will be a Russ Punisher. I didn't want to buy a new box just for the gun, and instead opted for scratchbuilding the gun part. It's easy and looks just dandy when finished. Here's the way I did it:

First I cut up the normal cannon like so.

For this model I will not use the middle parts. The rings on the left have become tow hooks on front and back and have a appropriate size for a tank of this weight.

The plastic rod pieces come from an assortment pack. Just pick ones you think are the right size.

Anyway, here's the pieces glued together that go into the turret.

Then I glued a circular piece in the opening and drilled a hole into it. It doesn't have to look neat since it will be covered up later on.

Now an important step. Stick the narrower tube into the hole and glue it inside to the back of this little piece. This will be the stabilizing piece to make sure your Gatling gun doesn't break off during battle.

Then slide the wide tube over it. Make sure that at this point you will have decided how long your barrel will be.

Then cut 8 pieces of thinner tube (almost the smallest one you can find) and glue them in a neat, circular way around the whole thing, like this

I ran out of tubing and the store was closed, so I found some other stuff that was way too stiff but worked out in the end, quite aggravating though.

After that I needed some metal bracing around the front and back end of the gun. I didn't have tubing that size, so I decided to saw of some rounds of a drill bit holder, just the right size. Finding your materials in the weirdest places is part of the fun of scratch building.

Here's the finished gun. You can see that after gluing all the pieces, I cut a circle with the same diameter as the whole thing and attached it to the front. In front of that I glued little pieces of tube following the line of the longer pieces, making it look like it's one piece of long tube. I have a hard time cutting cirles, otherwise I would have opted for drilling holes in a circle and making the tubes one piece.

All in all really easy AND really fun!

Next post: all the details that make tank building great!

Mike