Contents

PlusModel’s Hay Wagon with Wooden Tank (kit #428) comes nicely packaged in a sturdy cardboard box sealed with a colorful sticker label bearing a nice color picture of the assembled kit. Inside the box are two zip style bags containing the 23 resin parts, a loose piece of copper wire, and the instruction sheet. The bags are wrapped in a protective piece of bubble wrap.

review

My initial reaction when opening this kit was that the parts looked well detailed, but also quite fragile. I was impressed with the quality of the castings, although nervous about handling some of the thinner parts such as the bearing hooks. It was quite evident that a sharp blade was going to be a must if I didn’t want to damage the parts (Incidentally, as careful as I was, I did manage to break a couple pieces, but thankfully I was able to repair them without much trouble).

All the parts come on casting blocks that have clearly marked identification numbers. Many of the parts have a thin film of flash around them, which proved quite easy to remove.

Before proceeding, I looked over the instruction sheet carefully. They are quite simplistic in nature, with hand drawn assembly illustrations and very little in the way of explanatory text. When working with resin, I use medium viscosity CyanoAcrylate glue. I sped up the setting time with the additional use of Jet Set, which creates an instant bond. Because there really aren’t any locator pins for proper alignment, it’s imperative that you line up the parts in the correct places before gluing. The delicate nature of some of the parts doesn’t lend to undoing a wrongly positioned/glued part.

I found it was sometimes necessary to look ahead a few steps to get a better understanding of where a part was supposed to go, as the illustrations weren’t always clear.

The assembly was pretty straight forward, and took a few hours. The two wooden tank halves went together pretty well, but left a noticeable seam that required a little putty to fill. That may have been a result of my initial sanding/clean up of the parts. Perhaps I wasn’t as careful to keep the edge perfectly straight.

I primed the finished piece with Plasticote gray, sandable primer. Then I based the cart and tank with acrylics, and weathered with oils.

conclusion

Overall, this is a very nice kit. The finished product looks really good. I would recommend you have some experience working with resin before you tackle this project. The instructions could be a bit better in terms of clarity, and it would have been nice if PlusModel included some basic information about the model’s real life counterpart. I tried doing a search for a real life example of this type of wagon and tank, but came up empty. I’m really curious what the tank would have been used for. Did it hold water for farm workers in the field, or animals? Did it hold wine that would be sold out on the streets? Maybe I’ll never know.