1:35 Milk bottles with crates and churns

Milk churns, bottles and crates 1:35

These small resin castings capture the inventory that appeared at every dairy and on every farm in the 1940s: tall churns with lids, glass bottles and wooden crates for carrying them. They bring scale and a human dimension into a scene.

Milk during the war

Delivering milk was among the activities that did not stop even during the fighting. Tinned-plate churns went from the yards to collection points by the roads, from where carts and later trucks took them away; bottles were delivered around the towns and the empties came back. In a scene where an armored vehicle stands beside a pile of churns, it is immediately clear that the war went on in the middle of ordinary life, and such a contrast can give a whole piece its story.

How to get the impression of glass and tin

The churns are finished in a polished metallic shade, over which a thin dark glaze is laid; the metallic sheen is calmed down that way and the hoops stand out. With the bottles, a translucent green or blue varnish applied over a light base helps, or closing the whole casting with a high-gloss coat. The wood of the crates is picked out with a glaze drawn along the length of the grain and dirtied with pigment.

Where to set the set

• on a farm, at a dairy or at a collection point by the road
• in a town scene with a shop or a yard
• on a cart, the bed of a vehicle or beside figures of civilians
• for modelers who collect small accessories for vignettes

The components come raw and unpainted, and the modeler supplies all the chemicals.