Dragon Models Ltd

1/72 Soviet Su-85M Tank Destroyer

Kit Number: 7211

Reviewed by  Vladimir Yakubov, IPMS# 37761

MSRP: $14.95 Distributed by Dragon Model USA ( www.dragonmodelsusa.com ) Su-85M was a T-34 based Soviet self-propelled gun that was made as an expediency vehicle when Su-100 production ran into the problem of not having enough 100mm guns. As not to slow down production of the chassis the decision was made to use the 85mm gun that was used in the T-34/85. Therefore except for the gun and the mask the vehicle was identical to the Su-100. Dragon went the same way and except for 4 parts (the gun, the gunmask, the mantlet and the rear plate of the fighting compartment) the rest of the kit is identical to the Su-100 kit. The kit contains 98 plastic parts that are molded in crisp light grey plastic with no flash. In addition to those there are 14 photoetch and 2 rubber tracks and 2 metal cables. There are also 40 parts that are used for the other models of the T-34s and Su-100s that Dragon produces. The decals for three vehicles are included - two green and one white tanks. As a general notice, any time Dragon provides decals for the Soviet vehicles, you should be very careful about using their slogans that are provided on the decals as they are almost always misspelled, and usually make no sense in Russian. I would check them first if accuracy of the decals is a concern.

The construction was done in four stages. The first stage was the work performed on the engine deck. Dragon provides two options on finishing the engine deck - with plastic parts and with photoetch screens. Since the grilles on the T-34 are so prominent I chose to use the photoetch screens. I used the Dremel tool to drill out the holes for the side and upper grilles in the hull. The grilles are rather large so the internal structure for the engine deck can be seen through them, so if you are going to use the photoetch screens you need to blank off the area underneath them. I went a step further and used the photoetch engine deck from OKB Grigorov, to show the engine deck detail underneath the grilles. The instructions that Dragon has for the installation of the rear grille are wrong. They say that it has to be installed underneath the cover, which creates a large step, which is wrong. It should be installed above the cover, for which the contour of the grille has to be sanded off it. The second stage was building the hull. Before assembling the top and the bottom parts of the hull I removed the fenders from the hull. I was making a vehicle from a photo of the Su-85M seen in Berlin on May 8, 1945 and that particular vehicle had several differences with the stock one as far as the fenders go. The forward fenders were lost and replaced by the homemade ones, the first half of the right fender was also lost and the rest of them were pretty heavily bent. To show all of this I've scratchbuilt the fenders from thin brass plate.

The rest of the hull went together pretty easily. Some points of note - if you are going to build the tank without the front fenders as they often appeared, you will have to fill in the hole on the sides of the engine nose piece. The rear round transmission access hatch is smaller and thinner than the hole in the rear plate, so unless you are going to pose it open, you should glue it to the rear plate before gluing the rear plate to the hull. Also be careful as to which rear plate you will glue to the back of the fighting compartment - there are two, one for the Su-100 and the other is for Su-85M. Once the hull was done, I started detailing it. First thing I did was glue all of the hatches closed as I didn't want to scratchbuild the interior. The hatches required some minor sanding to have them fit snugly. I used the metal barrel from ARMO. I only used two out of four fuel tanks as one was clearly missing in the prototype and on the other side of the tank often only one tank rather than two was used. I thinned down the brackets for the tanks using the sandpaper and glued them to the hull, them I took the tanks themselves and sanded off the holding straps, roughed up and dented the tanks and got some replacement straps from the photoetch in the spares box. On the empty bracket I glued the straps only and bent them to simulate battle damage. The grab handles were made from thin wire. The saw was also scratch built because I already used it on the other model. Last step in the construction process was painting and weathering. I painted the model using the Model Master enamel paints. The photo of the tank showed had painted numbers and that is what I did as well. After the painting was done I went over the entire model with a wash of the stuff called "Black-it-out". It is a water soluble black wash that is very easy to use. I usually cover all of the model and then once dry I use a Q-tip and a brush to wash off the excess. Once the wash was done, I dry-brushed the model with the lightened base color. After all that was done I assembled the running gear. The vehicle that I was building had first three wheels on the right side replaced with the spoked wheels, which I took from a Revel's T-34/85 kit. I used photoetch tracks from Part. Once the tracks were installed time came for final weathering of the model for which I decided to experiment with the new technique that I read about online. I usually weather with ground up pastels, but while they are pretty good on the flat surfaces they are hard to get into crevasses and are very fragile to the touch. To solve that I ground up the pastels as usual but them I used alcohol to make them into a liquid, which I brushed onto the model. After it was dry I used a large stiff brush to brush off the excess from the flat surfaces and it left me with a very nicely dusty model with heavy dust in the crevasses and lighter dusting on the flat surfaces. As a last step I covered the model with Model Master Dullcote. I would recommend the model to anyone interested in the Soviet WWII armor. The kit can be build fast out of the box and look very well or you can add all kinds of bells and whistles to it and make it look even better. There are no major problems with the kit and the minor ones are relatively easily solvable.

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