Product Review: Berkshire Junction's EZ Line

 Model railroading firm Berkshire Junction came up with a winner when they developed EZ Line. It was meant for adding in-scale power and communication lines, even wire fences, to railroad layouts, but this product has many uses.

As the product blurb explains, it is an elastic polymer with 700% stretch, and given that the spool comes with 100 feet of line, that’s a lot of finished product! It comes in five stock colours, white, charcoal, green, rust and rope, but the thread takes acrylic paint perfectly so if you can’t get the colour you need for a particular job it’s no disaster. When I ordered I could only get rust, so I use Tamiya XF-1, diluted with thinner, to create black antenna cables on aircraft.

The thread is very thin! When stretched it seems hair-thin, and that’s almost scary. Obviously, the tighter you draw it, the thinner it becomes, and that’s something to keep in mind. The extreme elasticity means there is very little ‘pull’ to it, which places it within the grabbing strength of superglue, and even my first fumbling attempt was pretty successful.

I rigged the antenna wire on my 1:48th scale Hasegawa Bf 109 K-4 (see the final roundup on that project, coming next post), and found the line worked very well, though you need patience and dexterity, and a decent pair of tweezers. I located the forward end into a tiny hole drilled in the fuselage top, simply fixing it with a drop of CA in the hole, and when it was dry I threaded it through the loop antenna and drew it (mildly) tight across the stub mast on the tailplane, dabbed it with CA and held it in place for a couple of minutes until I dared release it. It held no bother, and I trimmed the loose end with small scissors. The cross-cable was done the same way, seated into a fine drilling in the fuselage and, when dry, drawn very mildly up against a spot of glue placed on the first cable, and held. When dry I trimmed the end, and it was done. The cross-cable inevitably deflects the main cable down, which is not technically accurate: I’ll need to play with this product a bit more to figure out how to use it best.

Apparently it is very popular with biplane enthusiasts for rigging, and that’s a job I look forward to with some trepidation, though also interest, as I’m sure a well-rigged biplane will look great on the shelf! Shipbuilders have been encountering great success using this product for elements of rigging. Another project that comes to mind is a PBY Catalina, using EZ Line for those enormously long radio antennas between the tailplane and the wingtips.

The elastic thinning of the line also means it is equally appropriate for 1:72nd scale, simply draw the thread a little tighter to get greater scale thinness.

All in all, though comparatively expensive, this is a very versatile product, and the name tells all, it really is easy to use. I don’t think my tools draw will ever be without EZ Line from now on. See EZ Line and many other products at: http://www.berkshirejunction.com I ordered mine in Australia online through Red Roo: http://www.redroomodels.com/ where the price is currently Aus$26 per spool, plus shipping.