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Get a sharp bradle, you should no longer find it easy to miss align drilling your barrels - if you do fill them with green stuff and paint the end and move on to the next one lesson learned to be more careful.

Absolutely, this is a must. Something many fantasy collectors ought to remember for their gunpowder weapons.

I like to see it. For practicality sake I don't do it often, 60 tiny lasguns isn't the easiest thing to drill out. But I appreciate the effort when I see it and if the model has it by default I like it.

It doesn't affect my life in the slightest. So I'd ideally vote "I don't care" but "it doesn't matter" is more diplomatic.

I do it religiously on my own figures. It wouldn't detract too much from my opinion of other people's models, whereas mould lines would. On the other hand its just lazy. I can at least understand unfiled mould lines -as ugly as they are, removing them correctly is time consuming. Whereas drilling a gun barrel is dead simple and takes about 30 seconds. For me its a case of "why the hell would you not do it?"

Drilling out my gun barrels is a must for me. I think the problem is that a lot of people think you need an actual drill to do this, when all you really need to do is place an exacto blade on the center of the barrel and spin the blade around a few times.

I have a hobby hand drill and it's easy enough to do, but considering my primary army is orks I'd have somewhere around 200 barrels to drill since 99% of all ork models are equipped with at least a pistol. I just need to find some time to sit down, listen to a podcast, and drill.

Using the correct drill-bit is key. I messed up the plasma pistols on my Van Saar. I might have fixed them with the glue brush and carefully pushing it back into place, but we'll see. That was with a 0.5 mm bit.

Or, just use a sharp knife, as above.

drilled my grey knights, drilled my drak angels, drilled my chaos marines, Sisters of battle come pre-drilled, when they come in plastic, will definitely drill them all...

Otherwise it looks like I'm painting miniature LARP'ers. Although it has to be done right, nice and centered not too big not too small.

I think it depends on the model, as some I think you can get away with without a gun barrel (certain plasma weapons come to mind) but most bolster/gun models look better with a barrel.

I am not really arsed me, my painting looks gak anyway so having no barrels doesn't make them look any worse.

Either way works for me.
If a mini is sculpted that way, awesome. If you go to that effort, good for you. Personally I'm not going to go to that effort & don't care wether you do or not.

I've been back and forth on this in the past and while not drilling them is easier, I feel like drilled barrels just look a bit better. If not drilled, at least a dot of black to suggest an opening is a must for me.

If gun barrel drilling (or any other methods to make a barrel hole) possible. then yes. a model should have more 'dimensions' and 'realism touch' to it.

I would have to say yes to this one. It's certainly a nice addition, but it isn't 100% required for me to enjoy a particular miniature soldier.

Take a third option and play with models where the barrels are too small to drill.

This is only really an issue with larger scale models. As Warhammer and say Warmachine go for more cartoonish proportions for their figures it becomes more evident. As opposed to say having a single model out of your whole collection with a gun large enough to require drilling.

In the case of the scales I work with (28mm typically - true 28mm that is, not "Heroic") outside of tanks you don't really see a barrel anywhere near large enough that even could be drilled reasonable. For 28mm modern miniatures a 30mm autocannon still has a barrel the same width as a pin. In which case with tanks and the like you tend to find the barrels are made from metal or resin, which makes having a simulated drilled barrel simpler to manage.Otherwise they come in two parts or have a separate moulded muzzle brake, so drilling isn't necessary.

To be honest where the barrel isn't either drilled, or at least has a depression to represent the barrel, I'll wind up painting a black circle on the end instead. Though with 1/56-1/48th scale vehicles its the minority of kits that have barrels large enough to drill, or don't already accommodate for this (and where they don't, if its a real issue you can buy a high quality third party metal or resin barrel).

I can imagine that drilled barrels look awesome, but I don't personally see them as a necessity.

Heh. This just randomly popped up on the Dakka front page for me, so I voted. Then I see it's a thread from 2012.

THREAD NECROMANCY! IT'S ALIVE!

I don't really care if the barrels are drilled out or not.

I like to see it in the same way that I like to see 4-5 layers of highlighting, wet blending, NMM and OSL. Yes it looks good but I certainly can't be arsed to do it...