Machined metal barrels - your thoughts?

I dunno ... in 1/350, especially for something like battleship main guns, I can see going the machined brass barrel route. Possibly even 5-inch guns, if you're going to superdetail the entire model anyway. But in 1/700 ... no. A 5-inch open mount in that scale is just teensy (I've never fooled with anything larger). I do, however, put a tiny dot of gloss black paint at the end of the barrel, which seems to give it some depth and the illusion that it's open. 

For the 5" and a few other accessories you might want to consider a gentleman in Canada who is making resin turrets.  He produces some other after market pieces you might like for your Fletcher.  These are grown from a 3d printer.  I have some and they are amazing.  The exchange rate in Canada's probably a little better than anything Euro right now.  Here's a link to their site....

http://www.paperlab.com/index.html

Dave

The Tamiya Fletcher's turrets are known to be a bit under-sized. L'Arsenal offers a set of 5"/38 turrets you can use to remedy this situation if it bothers you, and there is a supplemental set of brass barrels that you might think about given the topic of this thread.

It's an interesting question!  More so, because I have bought the Fujimi 1/350 Kongo, which came with both the molded styrene main gun barrels, as well as turned brass main gun barrels.  The brass barrels appear to be thinner than the styrene ones, and I wonder which is more accurate?  I have used brass barrels on a 1/350 Atago heavy cruiser, and they have been quite satisfactory (I particularly like the well-tuned bore, very nice!).  The Tamiya Fletcher has been around for quite some time, and I would think that any PE and/or other brass AM items are probably pretty well researched by now, but I leave that for others to speak of in-depth.

Hi Sumpter250 -

Thanks for the feedback!  I've got a couple of OOB under my belt now, and I am planning either the Tamiya Fletcher or Trumpeter Liberty Ship with PE.  In the case of the Fletcher, I had seen some AM metal barrels, and was weighing whether to go that route or use the ones that came, but drill out the centers. 

Down the road, I am planning the Tamiya Prince of Wales, and I have seen a number of battleship builds, particularly at 1/350, using the AM metal barrels.  However, at this scale (or 1/700) are they that much more accurate?  (I know it's all in the eye of the modeler).  Just thinking ahead...

Thanks, Rick 

Many of the armor modelers, use AM machined gun barrels. I've seen 1/35 scale 75mm barrels with rifling. You asked, so, if you are going to use an AM barrel, then you almost need to comit to  photo etch, and other aftermarket parts. The reasonong here is, if you use one highly /accurately detailed part, it will make the other, less than accurate, parts, appear even worse. If you are "new back to the hobby", build a few out of the box, before you tackle one superdetailed.