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SMS Seydlitz 1/350 Hobbyboss


calistan

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This is my build of the Hobbyboss Seydlitz, which I chose because (1) it's a really nice looking ship and (2) it's basically an all-in-one kit, including photo etch railings.

I'm not an experienced modeller. Until last year, the only models I'd ever built were a handful of Airfix planes which I made between the ages of about 10 to 14, which was some considerable time ago. If I painted them at all, it was with the brushes and paints that came with the kits, and everything would be emblazoned with fingerprints.

 

My sister is in the habit of buying me nostalgic birthday presents, and recently she got me an Airfix Spitfire, which I made, enjoyed, and made rather less of a mess of than I did when I was a kid.

 

That led me to where I am now, which is with two previous model ships in the last year, constructed with decreasing degrees of ineptitude, and a fair amount of money spent on things that I never knew existed back then, like airbrushes, fillers and 'detail up' sets. First I made a Tamiya Yukikaze plus Infini Model detail set, which in hindsight I can say was way too advanced for a first effort, and then a Tamiya I-400, which was much easier.

 

So now I'm on the Seydlitz, since it cost about as much in total as the Infini brass for the Yukikaze did (50 quid on ebay). It's huge and imposing, and in the spirit of biting off more than I can chew, I decided to try scratch-building some upgrades for it. The picture on the box is great, but the model inside doesn't look like that - the hull is completely flat and there are no torpedo nets. I've been fiddling with this on and off since October. Hope these picture links work and are not too huge/small. I realise there is another Seydlitz build going on here right now, but since this is basically a summary of work to date it should be over quickly.

 

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^ I bought some sheets of thin plasticard to detail the hull. As far as accuracy goes, I think I put on too many lines here but I liked the way it looked so I went overboard. No living soul has ever seen the real ship anyway.

 

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^ There is a ton of wood deck on this thing. I saw there are some real wooden deck replacements available, but I wanted to try painting it as the deck details here are very low and might get buried by even the thinnest wood. I sprayed primer, then shaded with pencils, then deck tan colour and multiple layers of umber and sepia wash. It's too dark but I quite like it.

 

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^ I drilled out the shallow kit portholes, at the expense of many cheap drill bits and some blisters, then backed them with plasticard so daylight wouldn't shine through. The metal rings are to hold rigging for the torpedo nets. They are made from thin silver wire, which my wife does not know I borrowed from her jewellery-making box.

 

 

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Fast forward a couple of weeks:

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^The deck parts masked and dry fitted for painting the deck details. As it turned out, I didn't really need to mask the whole deck. The hull is primed in white, and you can see the shelf for the torpedo net. This is made of a thicker grade of ready-cut plastic stick that I found at a model shop. About the fit of the deck - I could tell from the dry-fit that it wasn't going to be good. There were huge voids along the main seam in the hull, and on top some gaps of about 1mm, which is very noticeable. The kit isn't Tamiya quality (that's all I have to compare it to) but it's great value in terms of what else you get.

 

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^ Photo etch railings, steps and ladders come as standard. There are a few places where there are just some moulded lines instead of a ladder, but in general it's a very complete kit. Neither of my Tamiya ones had any of this.

 

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^ Forward funnel structure. It was only after priming that I noticed I'd made a mess of a couple of the rails around the funnel (the gaps had become clogged with glue) so further pictures of this will be taken from a distance.

 

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^ Super fine etch, very fiddly. I made this with the cranes pointing out over the sides of the ship, then decided they'd just get broken too easily so I cut them off and moved them so they're over the deck.

 

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A bit further on:

 

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^ These are the torpedo net booms, made from size 8 harpsichord wire and silver wire. The hull is painted with a mix of Tamiya hull red (which, as I found on my Yukikaze model, is actually a horrible shade of brown), normal red and yellow.

 

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^ The photo etch wheelhouse. There are actually instruments in here, including a pedestal with a tiny photo etch wheel. But there is basically no circumstance where you'd be able to see this without using the world's smallest endoscope, so I could have left it out. You can see one of the non-etch ladders up the side - they'd have been better off providing a ladder for this spot rather than that pointless wheel.

 

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^ Various deck parts dry fitted. The masts are reinforced with a long ladder but the arms at the top are incredibly flimsy. This one I reinforced with a piece of leftover Yukikaze etch (one of the braces for the linoleum deck). On the other mast, one was broken when it arrived and the other broke as soon as I tried cutting it off the sprue, so I had to make them out of wire.

Edited by calistan
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^ Platform with searchlights and guns. I really like that this ship is quite colourful, it stands out much more than my other all-grey ones.

 

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^ Here it is fitted to the deck. There are no photo etch ladders provided for the back, which is a shame. The kit hose reels are a bit anaemic, so I wrapped them in wire to bulk them up.

 

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^ The wires attached to that gantry are the thinnest bits of photo etch I've seen so far. Just touching them is enough to warp them, so they were a real pain to get fitted. When you look at it this close the paintwork seems quite rough but it's acceptable to me with the naked eye.

 

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^ The kit has some very nice anchor chain (not pictured). Better than the one in my Yukikaze kit, since the links are elongated and look less like a repurposed necklace. They're supposed to wrap around those wheels and pass under the curved guard thing, but that was originally a solid piece. So I could either cut the chain in half, which would probably look bad, or attempt to cut holes in this piece, which I did. Like most of the plastic here, it's flimsy and brittle, and there are some struts on the back that limit the places you can cut. This and the poorly fitting deck are the worst things about this kit.

Edited by calistan
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  • 2 weeks later...

This is where I'm at right now. Ship's boats done, railings all done. There was supposed to be a PE ladder up to the funnel in this pic but I had to sacrifice it to replace some other ladders I manage to break elsewhere. Maybe I'll find a replacement somewhere.

 

I found a couple more errors in the kit. The railing in the pic comes as one piece with gaps for bending it, which is super easy, but the gaps make the whole thing a bit too long for the deck edges. I had to snap the pieces off to compress it so it would fit.

 

Those little PE cranes are for holding a couple more boats but the lower wire was originally attached right at the bottom, so it bumped up against the railing. I cut it, shortened it and reattached it a bit further up. Does nobody at the manufacturer actually test these things?

 

Stuff left to do: figure out how to attach the lifeboats to the cranes, varnish, turret decals, weathering, torpedo net, a large amount of thread.

 

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well done mate , lovely modelling , if you ever want a great read - on this ship

get the ' Profile Warship ' booklet on the Seydlitz ( 1972 ) but very detailed and well written

SMS Seydlitz, Grosser Kreuzer 1913-1919   by F. Ruge                 

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I've varnished and started weathering / ruining the paintwork. Varnished with Alclad light sheen, then I used a mixture of burnt sienna and burnt umber oil paints for rust and AK Interactive's ready mixed salt streaks. I made the mistake of using Mr Color's levelling thinner to drag some of these streaks down the hull, and discovered that it eats straight through to the primer. Switched to turpentine and it was all good, this does look better in real life than via my phone camera (that decal at the front is actually bright red and white).

 

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Above, a turret dry fitted to the deck, which now has anchor chains and dirty winches. In the background on the left, I managed to knock off one of those incredibly fragile PE walkways. I won't reattach it until the last minute. I've also knocked the masts around quite a lot - luckily the PE ladders on them mean they're easy enough to straighten out, but I'd better finish this soon because it's not going to survive much longer (I also work at this desk).

 

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^ I'm not 100% sure what to do with propellers. This is a random mixture of Tamiya gold paint, hull red and flat brown, with two shades of powdered rust from Tamiya weathering compacts.

 

Once I've tidied and toned down the salt and rust a little bit, I'm going to spray it with a matt finish (Windsor and Newton Galeria, which I saw recommended somewhere) and attach the final parts.

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17 hours ago, Jase said:

Looking great, you may want to add a touch of green to the propellers if your after an aged look

Thanks for the tip! Would that be green mixed in with the base colour or as an extra layer like the rust?

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7 minutes ago, calistan said:

Thanks for the tip! Would that be green mixed in with the base colour or as an extra layer like the rust?

An aged propeller should be dull with a touch of verdigris.  if you google verdigris on ship propellers you will see what I mean.  I would suggest a wash so that there is a slight evidence of verdigris around the blade bases

 

hope that helps

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Agree with Martian, coming together very nicely indeed

FWIW - My go-to prop finish is equal parts Mr Metal color Bronze and Brass which gives that slight Verdigris finish.  You'll need Mr Hobby Thinners to clean the brush.

Rob

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That looks brilliant, I've enjoyed watching this take shape & at long last I can see what that funny looking notch in the bow underside is, a torpedo tube. Who'd have thought it?  <_< 

Your deck looks terrific. :)

Steve.

Edited by stevehnz
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  • 1 month later...

I think I've finished this now. I kind of ran out of steam when it got down to the really fiddly, annoying little tasks like threading up all those eyelets and attaching the rigging. I found there were certain tiny spots where CA glue just didn't want to stick and would not dry properly, so I gave up on it for weeks at a time. Anyway, it's all done.

 

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^ Torpedo net is made from muslin cloth soaked in watered-down PVA glue, wrapped up tight and painted dark grey. The thread is for tying flies for fishing. A lot of eyelets had got narrowed from paint and varnish, but dipping the end of the thread in CA glue helped it poke through without fraying.

 

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^ Damn that low waterline and Hobbyboss's painting instructions. Still, I don't really mind, most people won't know the difference.

 

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^ One of the things I really liked about this kit is that the sides of the hull are just a blank canvas. No detailing whatsoever, so I tried to make it as busy as I could.

 

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^ Thanks to Jase for the tip about greening up the propeller. I used phthalo green, which I didn't even know was a word, much less a colour. There was a yellow decal to go over the photo etch nameplate at the back, but after trying it I thought it looked really bad so I took it off and just dirtied up the plate to make the letters stand out.

 

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^ I had some photo etch oars left over from my Yukikaze kit, so I stuck those on the lifeboats to make up for not being able to make a harness for them out of stretched sprue. I really tried but it kept breaking. Incidentally, I was really impressed with the Galeria matt coat here - it's way better than the Tamiya flat stuff I'd previously used.

 

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^ There's the rigging that almost broke me. It's Infini 40 denier black lycra, which was left over from my Yukikaze. In future I'll use the thicker white version, because it's a whole lot of effort to attach but you basically can't see it unless you hold it up to the light.

 

I notice Infini has just released a huge detail-up set for this, which is a bit annoying since I've finished it. Still, I probably wouldn't have bought it at the price they're asking - 165 quid! That takes the kit from all-in-one bargain to massively overpriced, in my opinion, and it looks like half of the photo etch they provide just duplicates the very good stuff you get with the kit.

 

Next up I've got a 1/700 Hood, which I'll use to see if I can get along with stick-on wooden decks, and then a massive 1/350 Nagato with a ton of add-on bits.

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Gidday Calistan, I love that ship, and I am inspired by your model of it. I'd really like to build one but as my preferred scale is 1/600 I'd have to scratch build it - a pretty daunting prospect. Still, I can dream I guess. Regards, Jeff.

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