The Kit

Scale Military introduces us to a new product in their line of diorama accessories with their new Rubble Kit. This is a three piece pre-molded kit with lots of detail for the viewer. Throughout the Rubble piles you will find various points of interest such as a discarded rifle, oil barrels, fuel cans, various broken boards, an old sign, a violin that is partially buried, an old tire, various wooden boxes, and a slab of tin/ corrugated sheet metal. Stacks of Bricks and debris with patches of cobble stone street visible throughout the rubble are realistically displayed as the body of the kit. Each piece is cast in White Resin, which will give you the option to prime or not.

Prepping the Kit

Upon taking the kit from its box, you will notice that it shows various pin holes/air bubbles throughout the casting. These I choose to fill with Dap Spackling Compound. It goes on pink and dries to a white finish that matches almost perfectly with the cast pieces. After the spackle was dry I was able to sand a little as needed and prepare the pieces for priming by washing them well to remove any resin release agent and allowing them to air dry. Once dry, I sprayed the pieces with a coat of light gray automotive primer.

Painting the Kit

To paint the rubble, I first airbrushed all the bricks with a coat of Polly Scale Oxide Red paint. After allowing this to dry completely, I hand painted the bricks one at a time with a variety of Craft paints. The colors I used were as follows; Cinnamon Apple, Victorian Red, Rookwood Red, and Terra Cotta. I didn't use any set pattern to paint by, but rather drew from my own memory and pictures of what brick rubble would look like. Once I was satisfied with the colors of the bricks, I then painted the various detail items accordingly using various Vallejo and Tamiya colors. Once I had all of the base colors as I wanted them, I did a dry brushing over all the items using various shades of gray to achieve the desired effect. Next came the oil washes. I used a combination of Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber as an oil wash over all the pieces. This allowed them to "pop" out to give a more detailed appearance. Next I used Bragdon Enterprises Pigments to dust and blend the scene together. Various colors of the pigments I used were Old Yeller, Dust Bowl Brown, Used Brick, Green Grunge, Weathered Brown, Grimm Gray, Medium Rust, Soot, Dark Rust, Light Rust, and Ash.

Personal Additions to the Scene

Personally I added a few things to the Rubble Pieces to tie them all together into one scene. I added various pieces of broke boards made from Balsa wood, a mixture of Woodland Scenics Iron Ore and Brown Coarse Ballast, Sand, a small kitty from the jewelery section of Hobby Lobby, and a German Soldier made by Tamiya.
The Ballast and Sand was mixed together and poured throughout the scene to tie the rubble piles together and they were painted and weathered in much the same way as the individual bricks were using various craft paints, oil washes and pigments. The Figure was painted in Vallejo paints.

Impression

Scale Military has produced a kit here that will give those of us who wish to add rubble to their dios a nice alternative to making their own. All the work is done here for the modeler along with lots of little extras as stated above. The Kit is a very nice piece and will work well for many different projects. The three pieces can be used together, as I have done, or alone depending on what your need is.
The only drawback to the piece is the pinholes, there were numerous holes that needed to be filled, and although not a hard job to do..will present itself as a tedious one. I myself filled many holes only to find that I missed a few here and there, but as you can see from the pictures, most of them can be camouflaged with painting and pastel work.

I would like to send out special thanks to Keith Magee for giving me this opportunity to review and finish this kit for Scale Military. This kit will provide the avid modeler lots of opportunity to be creative and use their imagination to make it come to life.

Where to Get This Kit..

Check out ScaleMilitary.com to order this and many other great diorama products.