1:48 WWII German 200l barrels (2pcs)

The drum without which nobody flew

During the Second World War the 200 liter steel drum was the basic unit in which fuel got from the depot all the way to the machine. It was rolled along the ground, stood on trestles, pumped over by hand and left lying at the edge of the airfield until it rusted. That is exactly why it is so useful in a modeling scene: two drums standing next to a parked aircraft suggest at once that the machine is about to go up or has just come back. The box holds two pieces.

Where the accessory comes from

The publisher is 77propeller, a smaller Central European workshop whose range numbers some two hundred and twenty items. It started with spray stencils and paint stands, but today the largest part of its range is made up of small accessories for aircraft: wheels, exhausts, bombs, drop tanks and wheel chocks. The drums belong to this younger branch of the range and they are not alone in it. The brand also offers a separate transfer pump and a larger set that brings drums of both sizes together with a pump.

How to work with them

A drum is never painted in a single uniform tone. The base coat is laid down darker than the final shade, the body is then lightened from above and the scuffed places are brought out on the rolling hoops, because it is on those that a drum rolls. Rust is built up with pigment from the bottom edge upward, never the other way around. Anyone who wants to go into detail adds a light band with the marking of the contents to the body and traces left by a wrench around the bung. A pair of drums also almost never stands the same way: one of them usually lies on its side and the other stands, and that difference alone gives a scene the movement that neatly aligned objects never have.