This is another of Verlinden's 120mm resin kits designed to go with the large number of resin and plastic figures in this popular scale. This kit may be discontinued, as a friend picked one up mail order for $19 US, and asked me to build it for him. Having already struggled through the Panzer II, 37mm PaK 36 and 20mm FlaK, I figured I would give the kit a try...

First of all, the packing for the model is poor. The large sheets of resin flash that hold the main parts are just wrapped together in bubblewrap, but still rubbed against each other in shipping. Many hinges and bolt heads were broken off of nearly each part. The hardest of this damage to fix were the chips missing from the wheel rims. The small parts come bagged, and are molded on resin blocks. There is also a small bag of resin food items (more on that later).

Sanding the main parts from the resin sheets is a great effort. This is complicated by several factors, including the thinness of the parts, their large size, and the varying thickness of the backing. It is hard to sand a large, thin part evenly when the backing varies from 1/64" to 1/16". The wheel rims are molded like this, and, therefore, lack any detail on the inside.

I decided to build the wheels first. With over 100 parts and just six vague assembly steps in the vague instructions, you are pretty much on your own anyway. The wheels, it turns out, were a bad place to start. Everything about them was problematic. First of all, the instructions show the wheel spokes (yes they are all seperate, 24 in all) fitting one way. The spokes themselves fit the exact opposite way, although they are not engineered to fit the way they do. In short, you must turn each spoke around and bevel the top inside edges to make room for the other spokes up at the hub. I tried to lay out a spacing guide with a compass, but the kit parts were not precise enough for such an effort. In the end, I had to eyeball everything. The hubs fit loosely, too. In the end it is necessary to block the finished field kitchen up to its proper height without the wheels, and then add each one seperately at the right height.

Having built the wheels, I decided to let the kit sit a few weeks... Next came building the body of the kitchen. This is made up of eight flat panels and sides, plus some inserts for the center compartment and smoke stack base. The floor was badly warped, so I added it last so the large (3/32") gaps would be on the bottom. The sides, top and front/back fit reasonably well and required a minimum of putty and sanding.

The leaf springs and chassis are okay, but the larger parts are all detailed on one side only. Some of the smaller braces would have been easier to make from thick plastic rod rather than try to sand them off of the thick backing flash. The kit provides some very soft copper wire for the various grab handles. This is too soft, so I replaced it with brass wire. You will need to drill locating holes for all of the wire parts. Some metal chain is included, but there is no indication as to its use. The chain is not shown on the instructions, or on the single photo on the box top.

The remaining details include the various lids for the top of the cooking unit. I am not sure which are openings for foor, access to the coals, etc. All are seperate, but there is no interior to speak of. It would have been nice to have some bubbling stew molded into the food compartments.

Some food items are provided. I think these are sold as a seperate item, as they come packaged sepetately and have absolutely no relationship to a soup cannon. You get a large cast iron cooking pot (broken and with lid molded shut), a knife Norman Bates would be proud to own, one single "hot dog" sized sausage, two tied "U" shaped sausages, a very small piece of meat (a ham?), some apples (or beets?), several different sized loaves of bread and a half-eaten cheese. Some wine bottles are also included. These should have been cast in clear or green resin, but are not... No German utensils, mess kits, hot food canisters, ladels, etc. are provided; all of which would make this kit a lot more useful.

In the end, I have to wonder about the logic behind this kit. In its "out of the box" state it is practically useless as there is no aparent use for the kit. As with the other 120mm kits I have built this one is badly and crudely engineered, simply detailed, difficult to assemble, and not very good looking in the end. In the time that I took to prepare the kit parts and assemble the model, I could have scratcbbuilt a similar kitchen based on enlarging the Tamiya 1/35 kit.

Absolutely not recommended; even if you are hungry!