55 Gallon Drums-1/350 Scale

Wow. that's gonna be tiny. I have some 1/350 scale figures and they are about 4.5mm tall. You figure a typical barrel would be about half that height which would make it about 2.3 mm.

In my search for 1/350 scale figures I discovered its a popular size for ship builders. I found lots of figures in this scale but no accessories. However I wasn't looking for anything other than figures. 

Most model RR pretty much stops at Z which is 1/220. ZZ or T would be the closest but these are very uncommon in the U.S. Might check Japanese sellers.

How about making your own. I have seen sprue in small diameters. Might check Plastistruct or Evergreen styrene. Also putty can be rolled out into small diameters.

Yep, I'd say scratch build is the best option

Thanks gentlemen for the replies. Question for mitsdude: Math was never my strongest subject, thus, I would ask if the RR ga. Z is 1/220, would this be that far "off" from the 1/350, (realizing the 130 difference). This ship is not headed for any IPMS competition and my scratch building skills are some what limited. Simply put: Would the 1/220 scale really jump out as being out of sorts?

Thanks

If I may- yes. In Z scale drums would be a scale 4.75 feet tall in 1/350 rather than 3 feet. Thats an increase of 60%.

Likewise 38" in diameter rather than 24".

But where you come to grief is the apparent size.

Your drums will be 220 gallon drums.

I did a project sort of like this once, at twice the scale. It was an oil refinery in the early Twentieth Century that shipped its product in wooden barrels on a narrow gauge railroad. The model was N Scale 1/160 about twice yours. Because the barrels were stacked in layers, I needed a lot of them. Each railroad car had a stack say four barrels wide by ten barrels long and two barrels high. I bought a bunch of white metal barrels. They were expensive and entailed a lot of work to clean up. I saved some by using a spacer in the lower middle layer, and glued together one stack/ car load. Then I made a mold and cast a couple more. The project was kind of a failure because the mold rubber got in between the barrels, when I went to take the master out of the mold it ripped it up, and my copies were pretty rough. It was all just so darned small.

Depending on your needs, I suggest the following:

Evergreen makes 0.08 inch rod which scales about 28". Chop off a number of pieces that are 0.125" (about 42" in scale to compensate for the slight over sized diameter). Chop a bunch at 0.25". Glue the long ones together in a double stack and glue the short ones around it. Paint it up, in a couple of colors if you have the patience. I wouldn't, at least to paint bands on the drums.

thanks GM for the suggestion. Makes a lot sense. I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your last sentence re: bands around the drums? Appreciate the time you took to answer.

I'd do about the same as GMorrison. Just cut lengths of styrene rod of the appropriate diameter and paint. Then I'd use very thin strips of masking tape to mask off barrel bands, and hit those with a slightly different color to give the impression of bands.

thanks guy's for your thoughts. I'm going to try GM's suggestion and attempt a scratch built drum.

Incidentally GM, that  was some pretty impressive math you came up with to determine the 220 gal. drum

size!