I'm making a diorama of the Russian Front, and I was going to have oil drums with it. My question is: how do you make them look battered and beaten? Thanks for your time.

Are you scratch building or using Tamiya's set of Drums?
Scratch - is dependent on the material used. Sculpy clay you would just sculpt in damage.
Tubes of some sort you may be able to physically dent them as necessary depending on material.
OOTB solution - You may want to look at heating with boiling water then bending (can't forget the safety disclaimer) Hot water is umm HOT, be careful, use pliers or appropriate tools.
You could also thin down the walls from the inside using a rotary tool then damage them from the outside by gently bending them inward till you get the desire affect.
You could also cut away a portion of plastic and replace it with foil and damage the foil.

Well MEBM,
The method I used to make some battered oil drums was to take a half-round file or a motor tool with a sanding drum / sanding sticks and sanded/filed spots to make it look like big dents. Did the same with some of my AFV exhausts too. Results are believable with just a little bit of proper weathering. Unfortunately I don't have any pics to share, but I hope this helps.

Thanks for the info. That will help me out a lot.

Forgive me if I am wrong but the Tamyia set has battered oil drums in it i used one just recently. :-)

Armand Bayardi makes a beautiful set of battered oil drums. Here's a picture I found:


You can get his stuff from Sentinal and from Michigan Toy Soldiers, among others. Just do a Google search for "Armand Bayardi"

I have a lot of his products and they are out of this world!
Hope this helps

Sentinel is at http://www.sentinelminiatures.com " TARGET="_blank"> http://www.sentinelminiatures.com

firestorm makes some 2 you can find them on http://www.plasticmodelbouw.nl/
then under fire storm and then bottom of the page if you dont want to make them yrself

Thanks for all your help, everyone. Oh, and Easy, I got the same Tamiya set yesterday and I just wanted to have some more, being on a restricted budget and all.(I now have no money! #:-) ) Thanks for your time.

if your budget is restricted you can scratchbuild everything (or almost...)
I do so for this reason and also because is dificult to find the products in my country.