introduction

New companies are addressing the niche of 1/48th scale diorama accessories. BlackDog is a Czech Republic company that brings a set of Tiger I ammunition for your refit diorama. This set can work for a number of difference scenes, not just a Tiger scene.

In the box

Black Dog kits comes in a nice sturdy cardboard box with a zip lock bag keeping things in place. This kit, number T48012, comes in nice firm light gray resin. The box art is nicely done and will act as your kit supplied painting guide.

This kit is pretty basic and consists of the following:

Five closed boxes
Five two part (lids and bottoms) boxes
Five unused rounds
Ten spent rounds, brass casings

These pieces are really well molded. Black Dog keeps up the good high quality casting job. The resin blocks are in places that will not yield problems or will at least be at the bottom which can be hidden. The resin is a nice hard resin equal in quality to Verlinden or Custom Dioramics. On this set there were a few bubbles at the very tip of the live rounds. Also the lids came with one being broken away slightly. There was no damage to the lid and the part is 100% usable.

detail and scale

The detail is fantastic and representative of the actual ammunition and crates. The handles on the crates are nicely done as rope loops, not the stiff "D" rings injected mold versions show. The wood grain detail is excellent for 1/48th scale. When you compare the resin pieces from Black Dog with the injected new mold Tamiya boxes there is no comparison. The Black Dog ones are head and shoulders above the Tamiya versions. The combo images on the right with the resin pieces above sprue based pieces show these two manufactures.
The ammunition rounds themselves are nicely done also. You can see there are the appropriate diameter changes as you move back from the warhead. Compared to Tamiya they are on par.

From my measurements the rounds should be roughly 19mm long (19 and change). As you can see they are a touch shy more like 18mm. The Tamiya versions come out a bit close to a truly scaled down round.

Conclusion

The pieces are nice and are going to be a good addition to a diorama. Comparing this kit to other Black Dog kits it doesn't have as much 'wow' factor. There aren't as many pieces as in other sets. The casting isn't quite as good as in other kits either.