Zvezda & Scratchbuilt - 1/100 Russian Prototype A-32, precursor to the T-34

[RJBud1]

I have always thought the three T-34 precursors (A-20, armed with 45mm cannon, 4 main wheels in the tracks instead of 5, and BT-7 tracks, A-32, armed with short barrel L-10 76mm cannon, 400mm thick tracks, and 5 wheels for each side tracks,  and A-34, which had 550mm wide tracks, a longer L-11 76mm gun, and 5 wheeled tracks. The A-34's only difference to the T-34 Model 1940 was that it had a huge headlight on top of the barrel, and 37mm frontal armour plating instead of 45mm). I have decided to replicate the A-32.

The first step was finding the 1/100 T-34 model 1940 in my "stash". (Which is really only 15 kits - I'm only 15 myself, but I'm sure some people on here will envy the tiny stash of mine 😁)  After I found out I had already started it, and had attempted to remove the paint with sandpaper at some point, unsuccessfully, I finally came to terms that the model will have a slightly thicker coat of paint than I would like. The second thing I added were some neodymium magnets to the hull of the tank and inside the turret, so I can move the turret instead of gluing it in place.

The  third thing I did was take some sprue cutters and cut the L-11 gun to the size of a L-10. I eyeballed this. The A-32 also had these little pieces of metal in the middle of the turret that poked out. I'm guess this was where they welded the two sides of the turret and added a small piece of metal on the welded edges to strengthen the bond. This was not on any of the T-34's, they were all single piece turrets if I recall correctly. To make these, I took a piece of cardboard and cut the corrugation off and then cut each one to about 3mm in width, and superglued it to the appropriate place. The A-32 also had two periscope instead of one as the T-34 had, the second periscope was in the rear of the turret, the first in the front. I simply cut a piece of wire and glued it in place with pliers.

The A-32 had one large headlight above a coaxial machine gun. Since the zvezda kit does not model the machine gun, I took a dremel and drilled a hole and stuck a small thin piece of stretched sprue to replicate a MG. For the headlight, I found a searchlight that was from a 1/350 scale resin subchaser, it was the perfect size and looked like the A-32's headlight.

The tracks on the A-32 were 400mm thick instead of 550mm as on the T-34, but I found Zvezda's kit tracks were too thin anyways, so no change was done there.

 

 

Anyways this is my progress to create a diverse tiny scale 1/100 Soviet arsenal. Enjoy so far!

RJ