Introduction

Gutters, a detail that is often overlooked in urban buildings. 135th Construction Battalion has made it hard to forget about them now. Their kit CO0103 is Angular Gutters & Downspouts. This kit is the Trough style, a new style follow-up to their previous ½ round style gutters.

Catching The Rain

This kit will come to you in baggie form. 135th Construction Battalion tends to package their flatter kits in baggies vs. blister packs. When they go this route they insert a nice hard card as backing material to support the resin pieces. The package is topped with a nice black and white card stock header. Inside you’ll find two smaller baggies, one with the troughs and one with the down spout connectors and end caps.

Empty the baggies and you will find ten pieces:

• Gutter trough – 92mm long, 11mm wide/deep, 4mm high – quantity 4
  
• Gutter end caps – 11mm wide/deep, 4mm high – quantity 2
  
• Downspout connectors (Large) – 8mm long, 11mm wide/deep, 11mm high – quantity 2
  
• Downspout connectors (small) – 7mm long, 11mm wide/deep, 8.5mm high – quantity 2
  

The inspection report for the quality of pour finds that the gutters suffer from a bit of warping. These items are very thin and warping is a side affect. The warping can come in two flavors with this kit; length wise, and height wise. The pieces also showed a couple of very thin spots where a bubble is embedded inside the piece. This won’t be a problem after paint is applied, you will have to be careful handing these areas.
The inspection report of the remaining pieces shows no such problems. No warping or bubbles.
As with all resin kits, these parts all have the pre-requisite resin block. The trough and end cap parts will be easily separated. The downspout connectors will require a bit of care. The way the mold is made you are left with a two directional resin block. You will have to take two steps to remove these. Not a bad thing, just something to deal with.
The downspouts are well molded and are designed to fit with other pipe kits from 135th CB, such as kit CO 0102 or CO 0101 (see the related reviews). This will make building an entire gutter system for a complex building quite easy. With a complement of these kits you can integrate and connect some round Plastruct and have an entire drainage system.

Impression

When I first saw this kit my reaction was very favorable to the concept. I have scratch built buildings and found that gutters can be challenging. I saw this kit as a fillin for that extra work to get a good complete building. Missing gutters is a problem with complete kit buildings from other AM manufacturers. With kit buildings you usually get the main components, walls, floors, roofs, maybe rubble… depends on the kit. So conceptually this kit is a hit.
Face value, taking the kit for what the kit is, it is a nicely done well integrated solution. There are a lot of parts here and they are well designed to work with other kits within the series. This is a great feature. Once you try to scratch build your own matching components you will learn why this is a good thing. The money spent will reward you with consistent parts and a lot of time saved.
The downside after careful consideration of this particular kit is the width of the gutter. I am referencing the amount of space this gutter will hang off your building. These are 11mm wide that is a huge gutter, that’s over a scale foot wide. This size forces you hand a bit as far as where you can use it. In order to not overpower the building or look out of scale you are going to have to have a large building preferably a stone based building. I think that these are going to look out of scale with any one-story building.
The warping will pose a challenge with assembly and connection. In my past experience a bit of hot water and some gentle pressure will help these get back into shape. In handling them for this review I realized the length-wise warping will be easily straightened with some strong resin and clamps to hold the piece until the resin sets.
Overall if you have a big building these will be a nice addition. If you have a smaller building or want a slightly less bold statement with your gutters then you may want to check out 135th Construction Battalions ½ round version of gutters.