CMK's Tiger II Aluminum Barrel with pics

Thanks for the heads up. Are all CMK products as difficult? Sorry to hear of the woes.

I also picked up the CMK barrel for my Ferdinand. Looking at it in the box, the muzzel has the same amount of flash. It's tough because you have to cut it off the resin casting block and then sand the area that was connected flat then drill a perfectly centered hole to mate it with the aluminum barrel. There was so much flash in the holes on the muzzel sides, it took me 20 minutes just to clean it up and it still doesn't look perfect

OK- now I am REALLY getting irritated. I have twice attempted to glue the resin muzzel to the aluminum barrel and the 5 minute epoxy will not hold it.

Is the kit barrel in bad conditions, too?

No, it is fine and I may actually use it instead. I assembled both and put them side by side and there are extremely obvious differences, The CMK muzzel is longer by 2mm and fatter, there is a 7 mm difference in length of the muzzle brake (on the CMK is it is longer. By the way, I am working with the 8.8 cm KwK 43/3 L/71, which I am definitely not an expert on. Any ideas?

PS- took some pictures, which I will upload in the morning. Forgot my USB cable at work.

Actually that's what I was about to suggest if you are having problems with the AM muzzle brake. You can cannibalize the muzzlebrake of the kit and use ti with your metal barrel.

I mistyped. The muzzle brake is 2 mm longer, not 7. The wider part of the barrel near the base is what is 7 mm longer. Dwight, I may be doing some mxing and matching

Well, I did a little surgery. I cut off the extra length from the bottom part and then swapped out the crappy resin base for the kit base (worked out anyway because the CMK gun came with the late mantlet and mine King tiger has the early mantlet). Not sure wha I will do with the muzzle brake yet- I am cleaning up the resin and the kit one and will test them both out

Wow, sorry to hear you are having such problems! Always frustrating to pay the $$ for an AM part like that only to end up with junk that requires more effort than if you'd used the kit barrel in the first place.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I got it, but it took about an hour and a half to get it. Going to have pictures in about 2 hours,

And pics will have to wait...I just discoved I must have rolled my chair over the end of the USB cable that plugs into my camera. Flat as a pancake.

What files are you using for cleanup??

I got about 20 different files as I tend to work a lot with resin pieces, some parts are way smaller than that muzzle.

The resin shown in the pics doesn't look too bad either.

I have a bunch of small files in assorted shapes that I picked up at the local hobby shop. The muzzel took me 45 minutes to file and I still don't quite like it. There was a lot of extra resin inside it and a ton of flash in the holes.

Yeah, there would be resin/flash inside it as I guess that's where the mold halves join.
Pretty common with resin parts.

The benefits of resin are better detail, but unfortunately here there is not. It is not as crisp as the kit part and still has a mold seam. Wished they would have went the Aber route and provided a metal brake

Sure sorry to hear of your frustration with the CMK barrel Jason. I have to agree with Wbill76, you spend hard earned money for what you think is going to make the difference in the overall qualitity of your build and find out you may have been better off using the boxed parts. I'm sure you'll make it work though. Regards. Semper Fi, mike

Personally I really don't like cast resin or metal muzzles on tank guns . They always have tons of flash to clean up . IE I had a jordi rubio barrel for my marder project a few months back , and used just the barrel part , and the "Kit " muzzle as it was WAYYYYYY more accurate than Jordi's offering . And much less flash to boot ! I would suggest using Eduard barrels if they are available for your particular kit , ( arrow straight , excellent fit ,and muzzles cut out of the same piece of metal as the barrel ) second choice would be ABER , however , these require a fair amount of metalworking skills , not for the beginner by any means ! If you have no soldering skills , don't touch these ! I have used a CMK kit for my panther kit and it was pretty nice , but if you have a part such as a barrel , that requires it to be very very straight , don't go with resin anything . Resin almost always has issues with warping .

Thanks, spector. I will be avoiding the resin in the future. I was thinking "wouldn't it be nice to to have the extra work sanding the barrel seam?". Well, that was nice, but I didn't realize the rest

Jason,

I feel for you man, this experience seems like a real bummer. I've used both Aber and Rubio and was really happy with the Aber barrel, The Rubio was OK, but took a little filing in the muzzle brake to remove some soft metal flash. No big deal though. Thanks for the info on CMK products, I will definitely stay away from the headache resin brakes!

Steve