Verlinden have many
diorama products coming out every month – we thought when they were sending some
drums we might need to brush up on our playing – little did we know we needed
to bring cable instead!
Kit No: 2738
Kit type: Cream resin – 13 parts
Scale: 1/35th
Available from: Verlinden Distributors
For a great diorama you need every day items – and lots of
them. Battlefields are full of debris,
new, used and old items – often in use and often discarded – sometimes just seeing
tanks and soldiers in a diorama isn’t enough, you need the men to relate to
their surroundings. The people at Verlinden
Productions have had a great history of producing scale model accessories and
I think they are their forte – often things you cannot get anywhere else are
made by this interesting manufacturer – today we review something that would
look in place on any battlefield or civilian diorama – a pack of three wooden
cable reels of different sizes in 1/35th scale.
Supplied in a thin but wide white cardboard package that
contains three different sized drums in cream resin as well as a frame to
roll out your cable – the only thing that isn't in here is the cable – you can easily
produce your own scale steel wire from any hardware shop so its better you get
your own and keep the prices down I think.
The twelve parts are in the regular resin Verlinden use and apart
from the unseen parts in the core of the drum (these are never seen) there are
no bubbles on the surface of the parts. The parts come on a casting block each
which really weren't that big to remove – some easy work with my Xuron snips
sorted these extra carrier parts out and a quick sand with my 4-sided sanding stick (available in all good
ladies nail shops – you know the ones guys) sorted out any edges that weren’t rounded
or squared off.
This was the only part at which you MAY lose some texture of
the wooden slats on the drums – the edges are attached to the blocks – so you
can just replace that detail if you need – or be careful to make both of those
edges on the bottom of the drums so they won’t be seen
The two large round flat double sided disks have two layers
of “wood” pattern on the – so some good weathering prospects are there for
modellers – be it dry brushing or oils seeping into the cracks these have great
texture
The small circular blocks that is the separators of these
take a quick sanding to straighten the edges off before you either ready them
to paint or glue them to the disks with some superglue – these large disks then
are in three sizes – one – the larger of the three sits inside a cradle meant
to hold it precisely.
This frame again has a slight wooden texture – nothing too exaggerated
– it is a simple construction that either is aided by superglue accelerator or
fast acting glue. As long as you get the wooden frame straight it fit my large
drum with no problem. If you wanted the medium or small drum to fit the cradle
it would be a simple job of adding some extra metal material to make the ends
meet…
There it is - all
completed from box open in about half an hour – these will look great once
detailed up with either a wood colour or slightly coloured and weathered which
would be my preference.
These cable reels look to be just the thing for an
industrial diorama – for a city landscape
strewn with debris to a factory in Stalingrad to an a ruined airfield in
Italy – this large cable reel looks to be an interesting add-on to your scene.
I think they are a great little set – well done VP!
Adam Norenberg
A very many thanks to
the people at Verlinden
for the review sample used here. Below you can see what can be done when these are painted and weathered up...