Verlinden Wooden Cable Drums 1/35th review and construction

Verlinden have many diorama products coming out every month – we thought when they were sending some drums we might need to brush up on our playing – little did we know we needed to bring cable instead!
Verlinden Productions #2738 - 1/35 Scale Cable Reels
Kit No: 2738
Kit type: Cream resin – 13 parts
Scale: 1/35th
Available from: Verlinden Distributors

For a great diorama you need every day items – and lots of them. Battlefields are full of debris, new, used and old items – often in use and often discarded – sometimes just seeing tanks and soldiers in a diorama isn’t enough, you need the men to relate to their surroundings. The people at Verlinden Productions have had a great history of producing scale model accessories and I think they are their forte – often things you cannot get anywhere else are made by this interesting manufacturer – today we review something that would look in place on any battlefield or civilian diorama – a pack of three wooden cable reels of different sizes in 1/35th scale.

Supplied in a thin but wide white cardboard package that contains three different sized drums in cream resin as well as a frame to roll out your cable – the only thing that isn't in here is the cable – you can easily produce your own scale steel wire from any hardware shop so its better you get your own and keep the prices down I think.

The twelve parts are in the regular resin Verlinden use and apart from the unseen parts in the core of the drum (these are never seen) there are no bubbles on the surface of the parts. The parts come on a casting block each which really weren't that big to remove – some easy work with my Xuron snips sorted these extra carrier parts out and a quick sand with my 4-sided sanding stick (available in all good ladies nail shops – you know the ones guys) sorted out any edges that weren’t rounded or squared off.

This was the only part at which you MAY lose some texture of the wooden slats on the drums – the edges are attached to the blocks – so you can just replace that detail if you need – or be careful to make both of those edges on the bottom of the drums so they won’t be seen

The two large round flat double sided disks have two layers of “wood” pattern on the – so some good weathering prospects are there for modellers – be it dry brushing or oils seeping into the cracks these have great texture

The small circular blocks that is the separators of these take a quick sanding to straighten the edges off before you either ready them to paint or glue them to the disks with some superglue – these large disks then are in three sizes – one – the larger of the three sits inside a cradle meant to hold it precisely.
This frame again has a slight wooden texture – nothing too exaggerated – it is a simple construction that either is aided by superglue accelerator or fast acting glue. As long as you get the wooden frame straight it fit my large drum with no problem. If you wanted the medium or small drum to fit the cradle it would be a simple job of adding some extra metal material to make the ends meet…
There it is - all completed from box open in about half an hour – these will look great once detailed up with either a wood colour or slightly coloured and weathered which would be my preference.
These cable reels look to be just the thing for an industrial diorama – for a city landscape strewn with debris to a factory in Stalingrad to an a ruined airfield in Italy – this large cable reel looks to be an interesting add-on to your scene. I think they are a great little set – well done VP!

Adam Norenberg

A very many thanks to the people at Verlinden for the kit used here. Below you can see what can be done when these are painted and weathered up...