¹⁄350

German Battleship Tirpitz

"MSW crew-mate Julian Sallows (Gremlin56) shares his build story of Revell Models 1/350 scale Tirpitz, in this MSW feature!"

Built using Eduard PE sets, Modelmaster of Poland’s barrels, Vallejo and Lifecolor paints and last but not least Gator Grip Glue.

I have reached the point that I consider my build of the Tirpitz finished after six months of work. I have been taking my time over the last month due to preparations for Sail Amsterdam 2010 taking chunks of my free time.

I am rather happy with the way the build turned out but I would like to do a bit of a retrospective here:
The Revell 1/350 Tirpitz is very closely related to their excellent Bismark but Revell has had extensive rework done to the hull and sprues to make an accurate build of the “Lonely Queen of the North” possible.

The Revell 1/350 Bismark and Tirpitz are both “diamonds in the rough”, making an excellent base to work from for a pleasing build. Built straight out of the box they will probably be very disappointing as the railings and triple A barrels are extremely crude and out of scale. If you add enough aftermarket sets, (chuck enough cash at it), the result can be really good. I eventually went the whole hog and bought all the Eduard PE sets and replaced all gun barrels with scale brass parts.

For me this was a huge learning experience: my first 1/350th build, my first extensive PE set, my first run in with microscopic barrels etc. I started off using CA-glue for the PE and the results were dismal to say the least. After some searching online for advice on this problem I read a mention of Kenny Loup’s Gator Grip Glue. This solved a lot of problems and I am convinced I would not have managed to fit the PE without. I also invested in a “hold and fold” which made working with PE a lot easier as well.

Building my own blast bags caused much head scratching , (and some expletives deleted). I am not 100% happy with the results and only “Anton” turret turned out the way I wanted. On future builds I will tackle this problem in a different way.

I think I was rather over optimistic diving into a camouflage build : my port side of the Tirpitz doesn’t match the original paint scheme. Maybe I should have bought mask’s for this or maybe I should have chosen a plain old battleship grey build for a first attempt. To the uninitiated it probably looks okay though and only the “experten” will catch the blooper.

When I started using Eduard’s PE I was rather critical about the sheet metal they used for it as it is very pliable and railings, radar mesh and other delicate parts can be very easily mangled by a less than gentle approach. I became more and more enchanted by Eduard’s approach as the build proceeded: the parts fitted perfectly in all cases, railing lengths had been measured accurately etc. All in all very nice to work with and their support deserves a mention too when they sent me a replacement sheet of PE free of charge when I managed to totally destroy some platforms with my ham-fisted approach.

I can thoroughly recommend Revell’s Tirpitz; I have had an enjoyable 6 months building it and would give it a good 80% score with aftermarket add-ons, (OOB would receive a more conservative ranking from me).