Su-85 by Chris Wauchop (Eastern Express 1/72)

Eastern Express 1/72 Scale
Su-85

by Chris Wauchop

Su-85 Soviet Tank Destroyer

images & text by Brett Green

Eastern Express's 1/72 scale Su-85 is available online from Squadron

Construction

Here is Eastern Express's 1/72 scale Su-85 Soviet Tank Destroyer. Chris Wauchop was asked to build this as one of several small-scale armour commissions.

The model received some extra detail per his client's requirements.

Front and rear mudguards were thinned out and bent back for a slightly beaten-up look. The plastic of the kit was particularly pliable, simplifying this task, even lending itself to being dented.

The kit headlight was hollowed out and painted with Tamiya Enamel Chrome Silver. The horn, vision slots and the ends of the exhausts were hollowed out too.

Additional stowage comprising fine wire, stretched sprue and the foil from a cigarette packed was added to the superstructure side as extra junk.

The link and length tracks looked good, but the links were misaligned and required significant cleanup prior to assembly. Even after the extra work, alignment of the tracks on the rear right side was not perfect.

The plastic gun barrel supplied with the kit looked too thick and appeared to be out of alignment. Fortunately, Chris was supplied with an ARMO tuned metal D-5T 85mm gun barrel, item number 72 702, to replace this poor plastic part. This metal barrel was an impressive addition that did not require any preparation.

Part photo-etched set number P72-021 was actually designed for the AER Moldova Su-100 kit but was supplied by Chris's customer to use on this model. No surprisingly, many of the parts were unusable on the Su-85. Even so, many of the photo etched parts added scale refinement to the basic plastic. The large photo-etched grille for the engine deck was simply glued over the top of the plastic hatch, with the brass frame glued over the top of the completed assembly.

The saw was impressive, even including tiny teeth which were unfortunately completely obscured when placed in its holding rack on the hull side. The photo-etched stowage boxes were another welcome addition with subtle and useful detail.

The instructions were particularly vague considering the larger amount of tiny detail included on this photo-etched set.

Some of the photo-etched parts as supplied were inappropriately two-dimensional, but replacements were very easily bent from fine wire. These small parts included:

grab handles
handrails
tie downs
the handle on the circular engine access hatch

The antenna was made from fine brass wire bevelled with a grinding tool to impart a tapered appearance.

Painting and Weathering

Paint was XF-58 Olive Green mixed with Flat Yellow in approximately equal parts, weathered with XF-52 Flat Earth and XF-59 Desert Yellow. The model was also shaded and streaked with Chis's customary thin mix of XF-54 Red Brown and XF-1 Black.

All paints were applied with the Testor Aztek A470 airbrush.

The decals were straight from the box. These performed extremely well over the polished superstructure side - unusual for some of these small scale Eastern European kit.

No scale reference is shown because I lost my quarter, but take my word - this is one small model!