You are doing a very nice job. Keep it going and you will be fine with your Build…Cheers mark
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Hello all! Its been awhile but wanted to keep the build log going… I have actually made a lot of progress on the Tirpirtz all while taking pictures along the way so over the next few days I’ll start to post them again!
Here we have what is pretty much the completed, unpainted Eduard PE kit for the Tirpitz. overall Id say the kit is very nice and I honestly cant imagine building the Tamiya kit without it… The stock kit is too innacurate for my liking as with many of the other Tamiya 1/350 scale behemoths.
Anyways, yes these are older pictures but hopefully by the end of the week or so I’ll have you all pretty much caught up to where I am now, I’m honestly so excited for what this build is turning out to be.
Thanks, Jack 
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Jack, very nice PE work, the ship is shaping up very nicely.,
Mark
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(sorry about the format I’m importing these from my phone…)
Alright, Day 2 of catching up on my build log.
For those who follow my Instagram or even watch the podcast I’m a part of (The Micro Machines Podcast), You will have already seen these little guys going up.
These are my two finished Ardo Ar 196 float planes that will be found respectfully on the port and starboard sides of the ship. for 1/350th scale, man I think these turned out pretty Nicely.
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Day three of catching up with the build log…
These pictures was taken a few weeks ago when I had first put the railings on as well as the censored ‘swastika’ decal on the back.
This WIP picture still does look very rough but the ship is really coming together. Even seeing that first railing on there I was so glad I went with the Eduard kit rather than the Ebay upgrade kit which didnt have the exterior railings for some reason… I just love how they tie the whole ship together.
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Bit late to the Party on this one, but great job on oldy but goody. It is nice to see the older kits being given some love.
Cheers, Si
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Alright! Here’s my basecoated Tirpitz! No fancy weathering yet, just plain old base colours and partial rigging completed, she still looks magnificant though! This project Is really coming along.
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She is coming along very well indeed. Nice sharp P/E work…Cheers mark
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Great work for sure! She’s coming along really nice, sharp and crisp work overall!
Cheers
Jan
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Here’s a rigging shot!
I did this rigging with fine EZ Line. Very great stuff, I highly reccomend. Very impressed with the finished product here, I was worried about how I would even manage to do something so tiny but the EZ Line pulled through.
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Very nice work with the rigging. I find EZ line easy to work with, but I am concern that the line will not hold up as the years past.
Mark
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No worries, I dont really have a problem with replacing old rigging for new stuff if the situation called for it!
Very nice work on the Rigging. Working with E-Z-Line is what I use mostly for my Rigging…Cheers Mark
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After 10 whole months of Hard work, My 1/350th scale build of the KMS Tirpitz has come to a close. This kit was unlike anything I’ve done before, not because of the tooling or the quality of the kit but the fact that I went my own way and challenged myself by doing tons of customizations such as a completely custom 100% Balsa wood deck, custom rigging, aftermarket decals as well as around 500 Individual tiny photo-etch parts.
The KMS Tirpitz started construction in 1936, She was the sister ship of the famous German battleship, the “Bismark” , which sank in 1941. She was 251m long and weighed 5200 Tons making her the heaviest ship ever built by a European navy. The camo she wears on this model is the camo she wore on her trip up to Fattenfjord, Norway in march 1942 where she was later given a bit of a makeover.
This model might be a little different from a lot of the other ship models you see out there. That’s because For this build I tried to go for an “armor modelers approach”. Although very impressive, I’m not the biggest fan of those “clean” ship builds you always see where everything is base-coated and plain, I like to spice things up a bit and weather the crap out of them… That’s why I used the recently drydocked USS Texas as a reference photo when it came to weathering the hull. I love the look of a dirty old battleship, the greens of the algae mixed with the salt stains and how the original paint is faded away I just love how it looks and you don’t see a lot of ship modelers playing with weathering as much as armor modelers when I would argue there’s even more opportunity for weathering on ships than armor.
As for the base, That might have honestly been the most tedious part. The base is made of cherry wood I picked up from a local mill, I chose cherry wood specifically because I wanted it to sort of compliment the color of the deck which was painted in Russian red then coated in Tamiya desert yellow. On each side of the base is a nameplate that came with the Tamiya kit. It reads “German Battleship KMS Tirpitz” and was honestly one of the most tedious parts of the whole project… I did not enjoy painting each individual letter.
Large projects like these are often hard to stay motivated on. For this I’d just like to thank all of my model buddies for helping me keep going on this long journey, firstly my buddy @Panzer_modeler , who challenged me to do a wooden deck on this thing… Making this all Ezra’s fault. Next, @DennisatAutoloader , who was always in the store asking me how my Tirpitz was going, making me want to work on it when I came back home. Val, who very generously donated some decals to me, without those decals I’m not sure If I could even finish this kit. Gregg and Callum, You guys rock too. Lastly, to the rest of the MMP group, Thanks everyone for helping me stay motivated to finish such an enormous project.
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great work
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Wonderfully built and aged.
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Beautifully finished and weathered…Cheers mark
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Congratulations to commissioning your Tirpitz, very well done!
I know very well what you mean with long and big projects, which sometimes make it hard to keep your motivation high. I think most of us here on the salty side know the problem…anyways, you managed to overcome that and fished a great build, very nice weathering, overall very worthy representation of the Tirpitz!
Cheers
Jan
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