Add On Parts, from Belgium, produces diorama accessories in many different scales. They also have some upgrade sets for armor and offer various model building tools and books.

This set is comprised of one sheet of photo etched buckets, in two different styles, along with the bucket bottoms and handles.

The parts are easily cut from the sheet with a sharp blade and then the fun begins. I wasn’t sure how to get a nice even circular bend out of the tapered bucket, so I asked a good modeling buddy for some advice. The suggestion was to use a tubular object, of similar diameter to what the completed bucket would be (using the bucket bottom as a reference), and roll this across the part while it was laying on a semi-hard surface. I gave this a try, using an XActo knife handle and was mostly successful, with the bucket now being about ¾ of a completed circle. I moved to a smaller diameter handle, again using the rolling method but with a little more pressure, and this brought the two sides very close to each other.

I initially tried superglue to bond the bucket edges together, but this kept popping apart due to the joint not being quite flush. After cleaning the failed glue from the edges, I opted to solder the joint. Using some small electronic alligator clips to hold the two edges together, I applied some flux and then was able to get a reasonably smooth solder joint along the joint. Once cooled, this was bond was not coming apart! The next step is to add the bucket bottom. This proves a little tricky as the bucket body was not a perfect circle and I had apparently overlapped the edges more than designed because the diameter of the bucket body was now smaller than the bottom piece. I sanded the edge of the bottom to reduce its diameter but still had to force the bottom into place, causing a little distortion. The soldering of this proved to be more challenging and got messy. I opted for supergluing the remaining bases in to avoid the same issue.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the build process, I managed to lose track of the PE handles and had to fabricate some from small diameter brass wire. Ultimately I think I would have done this anyway due to the PE handles being visibly too flat to look “correct” as bucket handles.

Once completed, I used different paints on the buckets to give them a steel/aluminum color. A little weathering and some dents and these will be ready to add a nice, realistic touch to a vehicle or diorama.

A big thanks goes out to Add On Parts for supplying the review items and to IPMS USA for allowing me the opportunity to perform the review! I must also add a big apology for the extended delay in getting this review completed.