The box

Custom Dioramaics is up to the challenge. As we have all seen the big 'players' in modeling start to come out with new 1/48th scale land based military kits CD is keeping pace in the diorama world. This review is of CD8019 Middle East Ruin with Balcony. In the long line of CD reviews this will be the In-Box of an upcoming built review.

The box this comes in is 10cx18cmx13.5cm, so it's a pretty decent size. The box is a sturdy cardboard type giving lots of support. It has the usual CD box art done by Bob Letterman. He has done a very nice job with a variety of colors to give you all around inspiration for colors and variations. The sculpting of the kit inside is done Dave Pomeranski. From the outside it looks like Dave has really done a wondeful job with great textures and detail. Open it up and see...

Inside you will find move good solid packaging. The box is topped off with the ever present white peanut styrofoam. Under that are alternating layers of parts and bubble wrap. This kit is tightly packed, no room for bumping and breaking. Nice job. You will find one 8x11 sheet of typed instructions. Under and between all the packing material you find kit pieces in baggies and loose.

The instructions are nice and give you a Parts List so you can verify that all is present. This also helps in identifying what parts are what. There are 19 parts in all. This includes the shutters and doors. The parts range in size from 2cmX2cm for the shutters to 16.5cm wide by 12.5cm high. This will make the end product about 12.5cm high by 13cm deep by 16cm wide.

Instructions!

The instructions are a double edged sword. On one hand they have some background into the idea of where and when this building would be used. It does indicate that the original intent is for this piece to be viewed from the front only. This means no inside detail and no backside detail. It also has some nice suggestions on how to assemble and finish the piece. The other side of the sword is that there are no drawing to help with assemply. I tried dry fitting the parts together and found myself wanting a drawing. I was able to study the box art and figure it out (as they ask you to do in the instructions). So, spend a few minutes dry fitting everything to be sure you're doing things right.

The parts

As I removed the parts from the box I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail. For a building in 1/48 scale you may susepct that some detail is lost or not even sculpted in. This is Not the case. All the surfacess that need detail have it (being a front side view only the backs are blank slick resin).

The surfaces range from a nice brick/stone variation to a sandstone surface to a rough sandy floor on the balcony. I can't forget the sandbags, there are lots of them on the balcony. They are shaped very nicely, no uniform problems at all. The size and shape are well done. They even have a seam sculpted in them. I personally think the seam is a bit overscaled, but I'd rather have that than not at all. The back side of the bags does not have a seam. You may want/need to scribe in your own, depending on how obsesive you are ;). The wooden frames, shutters, and doors are nicely done all with grain carved in as in thier larger 1/35 scale 'brothers'.

CD has added small shelvs and grooves in the major walls to help you with assembling these pieces, don't fight these, go with them. Use them to help you assemble the kit.
The parts in general are very nice, detail where you expect it, support tabs where you need them, and fit grooves to help peices stay together.

As I have seen with other CD resin kits there was a bit of the blue mold in some of the deep creases. This is no big deal. All you have to do is use an al or pick and scrape it out.

These pieces al come from a one piece mold and they all have the slick back to show. The excess resin pour is not much. So each piece (as you can see from the 3/4 view) won't have a lot of clean up. You want to touch up all the edges and take a bit of the slick pour side off for a nice tight easy fit. I do not see anything in the way of bubbles so you won't have any of those to fill. CD has been very good with that in all the pieces I have reviewed. Lastly, being large flat pieces I was worried about warping. I found None. All the pieces were stock straight.

The shutters and doors are the only pieces that have resin pour blocks that are typical. They should be very easy to trim off with a razor saw.

Impression

Very Good Kit, it makes me want to break into the 1/48th scale world. The thing I love about this kit is it's varity, it stand out from the crowd of 1/35 scale Wester European city buildings. The quality of this kit is top notch and the detail is equal to it's larger scale 'brother' kits! This kit is great to get you into the small scale world of diorama building.