Kibri 7025 general impressions

While I anxiously wait for the arrival of my station in the post, I thought I'd do some prep work on the cathedral (Kibri 7025). After my foray with assembling the Kato rural platforms, I knew I would need some tools. These tools include a cutter, an exacto knife and a steel file.

The plastic pieces are still attached to plastic tubes which are the remnants of the openings in the mold where the molten plastic was poured. These plastic extrusions need to be clipped off, hence the cutters. After the extrusions are cut off this leaves burrs on the plastic. I found using an exacto knife is perfect for removing much of the burr. If I do this carefully with the knife, it makes filing unnecessary.

Kibri uses a mortise and tenon to connect different parts together. This is a common joint in wood working and I was pleasantly surprised to see it used here. I'm not sure if this is specific to this structure or common among all the Kibri products. I'm hoping my Vollmer station uses something similar. The use of this technique is especially good in connecting two corner walls together provided the joint is properly aligned. However, not all corners are perfect as you can see in the following photograph. You can definitely see a gap. The mortise and tenon in this plastic mold section wasn't correctly aligned so I'll have to do some filing on the tenon section to make the gap disappear.

For the most part, the detailing is pretty decent. There are some blemishes in the steeples, but it is minor. There is a visible seam in the external wall of the apse section of the cathedral. Aside from these and the small gaps between some of the wall corners, it's not bad at all. Something I do appreciate is that the window and door frames are molded separate from the wall sections. This allows the modeler to paint the frames in a different colour easily. For my situation, this isn't necessary as everything will be painted white except for the roof section. The other thing I like is the base where the structure sits upon. Again, Kibri uses a mortise and tenon to connect the main church pieces to the base foundation. I don't have any experience with other structures other than the Kato rural platform, but I think this Kibri romanesque cathedral is a good structure despite its minor flaws. If I had to grade it, I'd give it a grade point average of 3.3 out of 4.0.

I'm uncertain about whether to paint with a brush or use aerosol. Unfortunately, to use aerosol, I would have to wait for a warm enough day to spray paint outside. Problem is that the forecast is for below -20c for much of this week. I also plan to paint the inside walls black in case I decide to illuminate the interior with LEDs. The plastic is thin and any interior light would make the walls glow. An undesired effect.