Hobby Boss 1/350 Seydlitz with Infino PE

[ted0330]

I have been building ships for 51 years. I have never worked with a kit as perfect as the Hobby Boss Seydlitz. It is brilliantly conceived and executed.

Today's quality manufacturers have little or no flash, but parts are not always well-conceived or engineered for strong and logical assembly. This kit is well-designed. Parts are logically formed and come together in an orderly way, where one sub-assembly does not get in the say of others to be built later. Fit and finish were perfect. There was no hull warpage. The deck parts were flat, straight parts were straight.

The kit has extensive PE included, of an amount and quality exceeding that of after-market PE of even 10 years ago. These parts are in many cases not optional but a part of building the kit. The brass is noticeably thick, making it easy to work with except for inclined ladders, which were difficult to fold. You can build a beautiful model without adding any aftermarket PE at all.

That said, the infini PE set is even better. The brass is thinner and has better detail. The mast pieces are astonishingly engineered, and produce strong, scale-appropriate masts that readily accept rigging. The PE is also packaged in labeled packets, and there is a printed jig to confirm the identity and use of each tubular part.

There are two problems with Infini's PE. The first is the inclined ladders tended to fall apart in folding. The second is the PE is over-engineered. The torpedo net booms, for example, require 5 brass pieces each, 4 of them less than 1.5 mm in size. These parts have to be folded, then inserted into the single long part of the boom. There are 28 booms. I do not see the end result as meaningfully superior to plastic torpedo net booms. Similarly, the torpedo net shelving is very thin, and has no gluing tab with which to attach it to the hull. The detailing is gorgeous, but very awkward with which to work.

The kit instructions are clear. The INfini PE instructions are not quite so fine, but are comprehensive.

This was the finest kit I have ever worked with. Styrene generally falls short of resin in detailing and casting. Hobby Boss' Seydlitz does not. It is easy to work with, beautifully detailed, well manufactured and a joy to build.

[MartinJQuinn]

Thanks for the review. Hope to see photos in the gallery soon!