Hi Paul,
your tale looks like my story. At the age of 11 my father made me a gift, the (Heller?) Bismark's model 1:700. I made and re-made it lots of times, even in 1:350 scale (Tamya) ... now I have the full model in 1:200 scale to build; I don't know if I'll make or give it to my son (12 years old), so even he will be able to tell someone how he has started his modeller career. Your list of favourites is very interesting, in particular Viribus Unitis, that wonderful - and unlucky - Imperial battleship of IWW.
Time ago I made Scharnorst's model and I tried to reproduce the camouflage painting, a sort of green-dotted pattern thicker in the superstructure. Will you paint the model in a mimetic pattern?