Introduction

Custom Dioramics (CD) brings us another nice detail kit for our dioramas. This time kit CD 6111 is a pair of Park Benches. It’s a universal set, any urban setting can benefit from these gems.

Incoming

Again CD packages this kit in a nice blister pack about 2”x4”x3/4”. The cover is typical CD, with nice solid painting done by Bob Letterman. This gives you enough to put this kit together and get ideas for how to paint and finish it. Inside the blister pack is a zip lock baggie that keeps the parts well contained. There will be some movement in shipping but the shape and size of the baggie will eliminate the chance of any breakage.

The kit

Inside the baggie you will find pieces sculpted by Ben Jakobsen. Ben has done a nice job with this pair of benches.
Each bench is made up of four pieces:

• Bench sides – 33mm high by 24mm wide
  
• Bench back – 7mm high by 5cm wide
  
• Bench seat – 1cm deep by 5cm wide
  

To give you an idea of how wide they are based on a 1/35th scale figure you can seat three people on this bench. Three people will bring up the normal societal personal space issues in your diorama. Two people on the bench will give your figures plenty of space to spread a newspaper or map and find out where they are.


The pieces are all resin and have typical resin block. These look to be sawed off very easily. The contact surface is long and uniform so there shouldn’t be any problem here. If you look at the bench sides you’ll notice a bit o excess resin flash in the gap between the legs. This is going to be no problem for anyone to remove; the back of a #11 hobby blade will scrape it off easily. There is a bit of this flash between some of the slats in the bench. Again this will be no problem to remove.
Wood - Wood is one of those items that many try and scratch build and apply various techniques to model wood grain. There are dozens of techniques to use on styrene plastic, many just don’t cut it. The scale comes off more like 1/32 than 1/35 or even larger in some cases. With these benches Ben does a wonderful job keeping the detail real and in scale. The backs and seats on these wooden benches are wonderfully detailed. They are just waiting for a nice dark wash to make the pop up. There were a few bubbles in the slats. At first glance I don’t think these will present much of a problem. My upcoming built review will confirm this (or refute it).

Impression

I can’t wait to build this (see an upcoming Build Review) and get them in a diorama. If you plan a park in an upcoming diorama, these are as close to a “must have” kit as you’re going to get. Saving time and effort on the wood detailing alone makes these a good value. The uniformity you get here is another bonus. Two identical benches OOTB will give a nice uniform feel to your park.

As I mentioned these benches are universal. For any time period that has had benches, these would fit. You can drop them in to anything from WWI to current times.
Thoughts and ideas on how to use this kit:
1 Place them end to end to line a sidewalk
2 Place them across from each other in a small square as conversation place
3 Place them around a town fountain.
4 Place inside a courtyard to add some detail
5 Enhance a train or bus station with a pair