Najewitz French Café and garage

Couple of posts back I’ve posted a short note about starting work on a couple of 1/72 buildings from Najewitz. Well, they’ve been done for quite some time by now, I just haven’t had time to take the snapshots. And here they are!

My verdict about the kits? Construction was pretty straightforward, although I didn’t manage to get the walls to fit with each other 100 percent. In fact, the ‘hacksaw’ joints were quite prominent and even with generous dose of filler I didn’t manage to get perfect result. I have however to clarify that the issue could have been self-inflicted. Initially I tried to glue the parts together with plastic glue and was a bit surprised when it had no effect whatsoever. In slight panic mode, I switched over to super-glue and that worked much better, but I rushed the job and wasn’t very careful with ensuring 90 percent angles between individual walls.

Most problematic part turned out to be the roofs, or more precisely, getting the right angle there. I completely botched the job with garage roof and as a result there is a significant gap in the “joint” between the roof and the building.

Painting consisted of couple of steps. After a base coat of black from a spray can (big mistake, which I will not make again), I painted both buildings with actual acrylic wall paint. Let me tell you, those sample cans from DIY shops are worth their weight in gold, when compared with Vallejo or GW paints! Details like doors and window frames were painted with craft acrylics. Roof of the café building was airbrushed with Tamiya brown paint, while that of garage was painted with some off-green Vallejo paint. Not much consistency with techniques here…

As first step in weathering process, I gave both buildings a generous wash of Vallejo’s dark brown wash. Next, I used enamel washes to do some dirt and rain water streaks. Drain pipes were darkened with a couple of layers of different dark brown and grey washes.

The big although perhaps irrelevant question (after all, Najewitz isn’t selling these kits anymore) – are they any good and are they worth the cost? As for “any good”, you may judge for yourself, but personally I’d say ‘heck, yeah!’. They’re perfect for any WWII scenario in France or neighbourhood! In regard of value for money; here I must say that it kind of depends. You get two nice, but relatively simple kits for 25 Euro. With a bit of effort and investment of 6-8 hours I could probably crank out something similar on my own and here’s the big question – is the price worth a working day? To be honest, I don’t know.

Anyway, here are the pictures, hope you enjoy them.