1:35 Explosive Reactive Armour - no. 1

Reactive armor, set number 1 in 1:35 scale

An accessory for builders who want to turn a basic tank model into the vehicle in the form in which it really went into action. The set brings individual armor boxes cast in resin, ready to be glued onto the hull and the turret. They arrive raw, unpainted and without a base model.

A piece of the Cold War in your hand

Cladding of this kind appeared in the Soviet army in the 1980s as an answer to the spread of hand-held antitank weapons. A set of angular boxes changed the silhouette of the T-64, T-72 and T-80 tanks beyond recognition and went with them from Afghanistan to later conflicts. For a modeler it is a rewarding subject: every vehicle had the blocks arranged a little differently, some were missing, others scuffed or repainted.

Procedure for gluing them on

Clean the remains of the casting blocks off the castings and strip the original texture from the surface they are going on, so that they seat flat. We recommend laying out the whole row dry first and keeping a photograph of the subject at hand; a block that has set cannot be moved. They are glued with cyanoacrylate. After spraying the base shade, bring out the gaps and the edges of the blocks with a rub that imitates worn-off paint.

Who it is for

• Builders of Soviet and present-day armored hardware
• Those who build a vehicle from a particular photograph
• Modelers who want a model that differs from the box version
• More experienced builders used to resin accessories

Get the base model and the paints separately.