John Geigle of Masterpiece Models gave us a number of review items in Chattanooga this year and because I love to build the quirky and unusual stuff, I volunteered to do the dirty work (I’m going to try my best to avoid puns during the rest of this review, as difficult as that is for me.) and put this one together.

This kit is provided as a single sheet of laser cut wood along with two small resin hinges. The wood grain detail is etched directly into each part, and a front and rear mirror image of each component is provided. First steps are to separate all of the parts from the sheet and glue these mirror images together, which I did using white glue and lots of clamps. Allowing these to dry overnight, I then assembled the entire structure using CA glue, which took about 20 minutes. I have some small aluminum angle blocks which came in handy establishing the 90 degree corners. Masterpiece provides internal bracing strips for the walls and door, which add a lot to the look of the kit.

I carefully removed the very delicate resin hinges from their backing sheet, bent them, painted them metallic bronze, and glued them to the door. I then carefully attached them to the front wall of the structure. While moving the competed model into position for photos, the door broke off at the hinges, so I ended up gluing the entire edge of the door to the wall, which I should have done in the first place.

The finished structure looks great and certainly gets its share of comments in my model case. MM has a nice line of 54mm figures and other structures, and the kit will complement any other Western or vintage diorama. Now if I can just get my hands on a 54mm scale Sears catalog from the appropriate era, my work will be done <g>.

Our thanks go out to John and his team at Masterpiece for providing this and multiple other items to us for review.