Gero Design Plain tiles Diorama kit "The Westwall" 1/35 scale product review
Hi everyone and welcome to another product review video of Gero Design stuff. A while ago i made already a similar video, where i reviewed some of their products and gave my opinion on them.
It seems like they liked what i did there, so i received a second batch of their products. I got two things here:
The first set contains plain tiles in actual 1/35 scale. I reviewed other roof tiles in the previous video already, but they were not actual 1/35 scale. Too big! What i have here are roof tiles in the right scale.
And besides that i got also the complete dragon teeth Westwall diorama set. In the previous video i just got a test package of that with only a few dragon teeth. What you see here is the complete set.
Let´s have a look at the roof tiles first. They are not packed in any special way, they are just sitting in this plastic bag. Very simple.
It says it contains 1000 pieces, but i have been told that the bag contains actually more than that. There should be rather 1200-1300 pieces in here, to compensate for damaged tiles in the bag.
I pour a few out of the bag and then we have a closer look at the parts.
Now you see them up close. Their two sides look different. One is pretty rough, the other one is flat. I think the rough side is meant to be the one you see in the end.
The flat side is a bit caved in, so i guess thats the side where the liquid material got poured in and dried up that way.
A thing one can spot right away are little air bubbles trapped in the material here and there, usually around the edges.
Quite a few ones are damaged and missing parts.
It really depends on what your plans are for these roof tiles. If you plan on building a perfect roof on your model house, then you might have some troubles.
However, it is probably more common that one wants to build a ruined building or a pile of rubble, for that these tiles are perfect.
They are damaged in a pretty realistic way already, so you glue them on as they are and thats it. That is pretty neat afterall.
What about the scale fidelity? I will check that, since this was the problem of the previous tiles i received.
Let´s grab one and compare it to a 1/35 scale figure by Dragon.
That looks much better, i would say that is in scale. Good.
This bag of 1000+ roof tiles cost 7,90€ in the online shop of Gero Design. I would say that is an acceptable price tag.
As i said before, if you look for perfect roof tiles you should not get these. If you look for roof tiles you can use easily for rubble piles or ruins, these are a good option then.
I will be able to put these to good use, it is ideal for ruins or small buildings. There are many buildings which use tiles in this form.
Whenever i need perfectly intact roof tiles i will certainly continue to use the Juweela plastic tiles.
They look pretty nice, but they have a disadvantage: They are not that easy to damage if you want to use them for a ruined building. The rather brittle material of these plain tiles here is better suited for that.
All you need to do is just crushing them with gentle pressure. That way you get nice chips and chunks, which you can throw on your ruined house model.
Let´s move on to the diorama kit "The Westwall" in 1/35 scale. It is a tank obstacle, using these "dragon teeth".
As mentioned before i only had the test package for this set in the previous video, only containing a few of these "dragon teeth". What you see here is the complete set, as it is sold.
The plaster version, which is also the one i have here, costs 14,90€. The ceramic version costs 19,90€.
I don´t know exactly where the difference between these two versions is. I assume the parts of the ceramic versions are stronger.
I personally made good experiences with plaster parts so far. They are easy to paint and weather.
Let´s have a look inside the box now. The cardboard box is very solid. The instruction sheet sits right on top.
The parts are protected by several layers of plastic foil as well. As you can see nothing got damaged during the shipping.
This tends to be a problem of plaster kits, they often get crushed until there is little more left than dust. The reason is insufficient protection.
Here on the other hand it seems to be well done. I can´t see any damages, which makes me happy.
First we take a look at the instructions. I am glad there is one in the kit. Many kits of this type, even kits of rather complex buildings, do not come with instructions. The model builder has to see himself how he gets it built.
I´m glad to have instructions for this. I am not too knowledgable about these fortifications, so it is all helpful for me.
On the front page we get a photo of a real dragon tooth, as they can still be seen today.
Next they show us the content of the kit, it tells us how many of the individual teeth we get in the kit and so on. One should check the kit for missing parts.
These are the fundament parts. Here they show us how you are meant to set it up. The fundament parts should be arranged in this pattern.
Finally we are shown where the dragon teeth go, and thats it.
I have all the dragon teeth lined up for you. Tooth A is included three times, tooth B should be included twice, but is included four times.
Tooth C can be found six times in total, tooth D and E three times each. So, all we need is here, and we actually get two additional teeth here, which is nice.
Let´s have a closer look. You can see the surface texture pretty nicely here. The real ones were made with wooden forms, then the concrete was poured in, leaving this texture behind.
Sometimes the texture is not equally crisp and defined all around, but you can easily rework that if you wish to do so. It does not require any special tools.
Small air bubbles can be found in the plaster, but that is actually quite realistic. If we take a look at the photo of the real one we can see little holes and embeddings as well. We can see that here and there where the moss is growing, also around the edges where the material starts to fall apart. I don´t think that is an issue at all.
The nice thing about plaster is how nicely you can paint it. It sometimes "canes in" the paint, but i don´t mind it. It also takes an oil paint wash very well, because the surface is rather coarse.
I made good experiences with this material, i like it when buildings are made out of plaster.
It is easy to glue it with wood glue.
Plaster is easy to work with all in all. In case you need a dragon tooth in a different shape you can sand it down without hassle and rescribe the texture.
It looks lovely, i like what i see here. I like the fact that the bottom sides are all very even, so you can glue them on as they are without thinking about sanding them flat or filling gaps. They will sit well on the fundaments as they are.
Here we have the fundament parts, we get section 1 "long" two times, section 2 "long with angles" three times, section 3 "short with angles" two times.
Section 4 should be included only twice, but it is actually in there four times. Finally we have here section 5 "very long"
Again we get two spare parts.
All in all the casting quality is good. The parts do not feature any special concrete texture, but plaster looks pretty like concrete when you paint it anyway.
One has to see that these fundament parts will also sit pretty deep in the diorama base later. There won´t be much to see of them in the end i guess.
The parts are nicely casted, again we get only a few small embeddings. The parts are not bent or curved in any way. Well done.
Now i have it set up for you, so you get an idea how big it actually is.
As you can see this fortification is very big indeed. For size comparison i have here the well known Tamiya Panzer II. It fits in there pretty well.
It is big! If you want to use this you would need a very big diorama base plate.
When i set this up it also became clear that some parts were indeed not spare parts afterall. Only these two small teeth are not needed.
The two short fundament sections are indeed required to set this up. That is a mistake in the instructions.
Section 4 is indeed required four times and there were also four parts in the box, but the instructions tell us there are only two of them. Just a small mistake.
Well, what can be said apart from that? The front part is on the right here. If you want an expanded section you would need a second set i guess.
It looks very impressive indeed. Let me grab a 1/35 scale figure for comparison. The tallest teeth are taller than the figure. Impressive. This allows for quite an elaborate scene.
If you think of it, this set costs 15€ and you get so much material in the box. Actually it is a diorama on its own, not much else is required here.
Very interesting and impressive. It is surely an eye-catcher. I don´t think other brands offer something similar, at least not for that price and the same amount of material.
You have to see this is an entire section of the Westwall dragon tooth obstacle.
All in all i like it a lot what i got to see here. I can give good ratings for this.
The roof tiles are acceptable for what they cost. They are not a bargain, but they are also not overpriced.
Depending on what you want to do with them they are either ideal or bad. We already talked about that.
The tank obstacle is awesome in my opinion. The price-performance ratio is impossible to beat. Just think of it, it costs just twice as much as the roof tiles. We talk about 14 or 15€ here. Pretty outstanding.
I don´t think other brands offer something similar for the same price. Everything is good here: Good casting, the parts are nicely packed and not damaged after shipping, the assembly requires little or no preparation work, so i can only repeat myself by saying: It is awesome and highly recommended.
If you plan to build a big diorama set in the west this is ideal. I bet your diorama won´t be overlooked at a modelshow if you display your dragon teeth line there. Its just great.
So, for the end of this video i have a little surprise for you: I have another coupon code for you, which can be used for the online shop of Gero Design.
10% discoun till 31 October 2018. You can see all the information on the screen now.
Maybe you find a few other things there, which interest you. Please check out the previous video i did about products by Gero Design.
So far, so good. I hope you enjoyed this review. See you again in the next video, your Hamilkar Barkas.
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