2pdr Early Barrel
for Matilda Mk.II
Armorscale Set No. B35-004
1:35th Scale
Review by Terry Ashley

The barrel features the flare at the muzzle for the early barrel and also has very fine rifling which is almost impossible to see in such a small barrel opening but is quite impressive if you carry around a magnifying glass.

The resin mantlet has subtle cast surface texture and the hollow opening behind the co-ax MG guard. The contours of the mantlet look okay but I have noticed slight variations on these from early to later mantlets in different reference photos.

The large casting block on the back of the mantlet doesn’t need removing unless you plan to add a turret interior as it just hides away when the mantlet is fitted to save a bit of work.

Resin mantlet and metal barrel parts

No alterations are needed on the Tamiya kit to accept the replacement parts but there was one small issue in that the resin mantlet was slightly narrower than the kit plastic mantlet. The resin mantlet still lined up okay behind the turret front shield but the two small pins either side wouldn’t sit in the indentations behind the shield. To fix this I added two small 2mm card discs to each pin punched out the a punch & die and this allowed them to sit snugly into the shield openings.

Tamiya mantlet, note small discs added to locating pins as per text

The metal barrel was a very snug fit into the mantlet opening as you would expect and that was all that was needed to fit the new parts.

Assembled barrel/mantlet

Instructions

Conclusion:
Another nice barrel/mantlet update for the aging Tamiya kit to add a nice detail touch with hardly any work involved.

Highly recommended

Thanks to armorscale for the review set.

Page created 29 July 2005