Don Murphy

Sure! By all means move it over. Cheers, Don

Mad Pete is indeed one of the true masters. And his etch work is a work of art. Cheers, Don

WOW! A blast from the past. I also built it as a young lad. Wish I still had mine. Cheers, Don

Hey Mike, The closest photos I have to that timeframe are photos from June and Dec 43 which show the original sail (tho slightly cut down), more free-flood holes and a 3 inch deck gun. In order to build the kit you'd need an aftermarket sail from the usual suspects (Iron Bottom Sound/Nautilus) and you'd need to drill out a **TON** more free flood holes than the kit has. Check IBS for the cutting template. Either way...it's not going to be easy. Let me know if you need any other help. Cheers, Don

Off topic? Well...not really. You see, every so many months we all bemoan the condition of today's youth and the shrinking hobby of model building and then we'll all start worrying about kids not picking up model building, etc. So you all should joyously welcome the addition of a cell-phone texting, Playstation game using, cheerleading, 13 year old into your midst. And a "girl" on top of that! Devon - although 13 - is no stranger to model building. She has a pretty vicious appetite, easily devouring most of my limited stash. Devon though, has remained firmly in aircraft building. While she has used resin and photo etch before, this is her first ship build. A school field trip to a Titanic exhibit was pretty impressive for her and soon she was watching the movies. It was then no shock to me when one day she asked "are you ever gonna build that Titanic kit in the garage?" "What...a 'father-daughter' build" I asked? "No...me on my own." Ouch. We opened the box and I fanned all of the Gold Medal and Tom's Modelwork photo etch like a hand of cards, showing benches, deck chairs and other sundry parts. "Oooh this looks like a HUD" she remarked while eyeing the deck chairs. Indeed...the chairs and their folding template resembled the head's up displays she uses on her jets. She was not deterred by the ton of etch that the kit will get. So we started out by mapping how she'll build the ship and then spent some time looking at the instruction book and other reference stuff I had. She decided that the ship will have a light kit installed inside. So welcome to chapter one: Prepping The Hull... Dremel in hand, Devon drills out all of the ship's portholes. Once the holes are cleaned up and ready, Devon will apply the hull colors. Paint wise, Devon will be using a combination of brush and spray for the hull. Most of the portholes are the same size, so that has cut down on her prep time. And of course, not being hampered by poor eyesight, her steady hand was able to knock out most of the portholes in a few minutes. Switching drill bits, the next task will be the smaller portholes. Once done, the cleaning tool will be added to the Dremel and the flashed over openings will be cleaned up. Once all holes are drilled out, Devon will measure the plastic sheeting needed for the porthole glass. Devon will affix the plastic sheeting to the hull using Testor's cement for glass after painting is done. Dremel work done, deck painting comes up. Brush painting with Polyscale Deck Tan Special is the order of the day. The humid Florida air dries the paint quickly and Devon is able to put two coats on. The finished deck sections. At this point, all the sections have had two coats of Polyscale deck paint. She will then buff it and start on the deck plates. All of that will be painted by hand. Her color choices will be based on the color photos of the Fine Arts Models' 1/48th scale Titanic. By the way, the kit she's building is the Academy 1/350th deluxe Titanic kit with the White Star Line poster for box art. The next phase will be cleaning up the lower hull and adding the prop shafts and rudder. Once that's done, Devon can work on the lower hull color and display base. Stay tuned. Cheers, Don

Beautiful work on a beautiful ship. Great details and great colouring. I'm still picking at my Iron Shipwright Hood. Cheers, Don

Great work so far! Cheers, Don

You're correct. The make-up was 86 aircraft: 12 X F-14 12 X F-14 12 X A-7 12 X A-7 10 X A-6 10 X S-3 6 X Seaking 4 X Prowler 4 X Hawkeye 4 X KA-6 Cheers, Don

Great job. Your deck is flawless. I did mine as the controversial "blue" Arizona. Cheers, Don

Great work so far on a classic kit! Cheers, Don

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I saw one or two pages of your work on this project on another site. Great to see the whole thing so far. Your work is fantastic. I'll be consulting you for tips when I start mine. I love the detail on the CIWS guns. Cheers, Don

Looking good so far. Cheers, Don

Great job! I'm working on a few 700th scale Spru-cans as well. Cheers, Don

Beautiful work! Stunning work for such a small scale. Makes my eyes hurt just looking at it...... Cheers, Don

Everything looks great so far. A beautiful kit of a beautiful ship. I'm doing my KGV as she was when she met Bismarck. Cheers, Don

Back in 2004, I was building a Blue Water Navy resin destroyer kit for a former crewmember. Well, it went pretty well, but UPS destroyed it during shipping: It all started when they punched through the 1/8th inch thick plexiglass display case... Things went downhill from there... All the photo etch was ripped off as well as the mast shattered, nose broken, etc. I filed a claim and UPS ponied up. They paid for everything. Funny enough, they never wanted the pieces back. So I just threw the carcass in my "junk" box and got on with my life. The kit was weird because although it was the two hanger version, the client wanted the no hanger version (Flight I). So I had special ordered a duplicate PE fret, some extra resin pieces, etc. Well as you can imagine, I was clearing out the garage for the 9000 time and I came across an unmarked box. Inside was the carcass and the extra PE and resin pieces. Hmmmm... I sanded down the dents and dings and added putty to fill in the parts that were really destroyed. It didn't take that long and I made the decision to rebuild the thing. For the mast, I used some resin parts "trees" that I had laying around and put a silver nail on top for the topmast. The spare photo etch and resin funnels were used to replace UPS damaged parts. Two 1/35th scale tank pieces were used for braces for the main mast. All the mast pieces are scratchbuilt using photo etch scraps and a piece or two from the replacement parts fret. I had to rebuild most of the superstructure. I'm glad I saved her cuz back in the day, she was a $200 - $250 kit and the only game in town in 1/350th scale of a Burke Class destroyer. I'll be building her as USS The Sullivans. She's completed except for making two props and I have to scratchbuild some helo deck safety netting. Cheers, Don

Back in 2004, I was building a Blue Water Navy resin destroyer kit for a former crewmember. Well, it went pretty well, but UPS destroyed it during shipping: It all started when they punched through the 1/8th inch thick plexiglass display case... Things went downhill from there... All the photo etch was ripped off as well as the mast shattered, nose broken, etc. I filed a claim and UPS ponied up. They paid for everything. Funny enough, they never wanted the pieces back. So I just threw the carcass in my "junk" box and got on with my life. The kit was weird because although it was the two hanger version, the client wanted the no hanger version (Flight I). So I had special ordered a duplicate PE fret, some extra resin pieces, etc. Well as you can imagine, I was clearing out the garage for the 9000 time and I came across an unmarked box. Inside was the carcass and the extra PE and resin pieces. Hmmmm... I sanded down the dents and dings and added putty to fill in the parts that were really destroyed. It didn't take that long and I made the decision to rebuild the thing. For the mast, I used some resin parts "trees" that I had laying around and put a silver nail on top for the topmast. The spare photo etch and resin funnels were used to replace UPS damaged parts. Two 1/35th scale tank pieces were used for braces for the main mast. All the mast pieces are scratchbuilt using photo etch scraps and a piece or two from the replacement parts fret. I had to rebuild most of the superstructure. I'm glad I saved her cuz back in the day, she was a $200 - $250 kit and the only game in town in 1/350th scale of a Burke Class destroyer. I'll be building her as USS The Sullivans. She's completed except for making two props and I have to scratchbuild some helo deck safety netting. Cheers, Don

For my nuclear submarines, I use Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black for all metal. Then I use Testor's ModelMaster Aircraft Interior Black for the rubber/non-skid bits. Cheers, Don P.S. Which boat will you build?

The kit is typical Revell in that they stand off at a distance and say "yup...looks close enough" and then close the box. There's only two or three boats that can be built right out of the box with any accuracy. I am using Nautilus aftermarket guns and they are fantastic. I purchased the following guns from them: * Five inch 5/25 gun * Twin 20mm gun (2 to a pack) * Submarine MG set (contains every type of .50 and .30 caliber machine guns you could want) Your best bet would be to pick a boat that you specifically want to build and then myself (or others) can point you in the direction of which stuff it had. I have been compiling a list of which boats can use the kit as a base and which weapons they carried. That may prove helpful to you. Let me know if you'd like me to post it. Other than that, the kit builds pretty nicely with minimum effort. Cheers, Don