Deck Planking advice please?

[Andrew Martin 3Participant @andrewmartin3]

[Andrew Martin 3Participant @andrewmartin3]

Can anyone describe the best method for deck planking please?

I am assuming you lay a 1/16 plywood or similar deck first, then using strip wood glue this to plywood? What wood would you recommend to get the actual planking and the darker lines between? Secondly which adhesive? Should I after planking use sanding sealer then varnish or just varnish and build up multiple coats.

I don't want to use a printed method on ply though.

Any advice I would be grateful for.

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Hello Andrew,

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a best method, and I am certainly not an expert on deck planking. I am, however, happy to share my thoughts and expereinces, so here's my tuppen'orth on the subject:

What you describe (plywood base with strip wood planks glued on) is indeed the method I have used myself so far, as I think it makes the most sense. For the strip wood, I have worked with maple and pear. The former has a lovely whitish-cream colour, and takes stains very well (and thus can be made to represent just about any wood, including oak and mahogany); the latter is usually a sort of reddish/milk chocolate colour, and (while it can of course also be stained) looks really lovely when just varnished.

They both share two important qualities, namely that they both have a very fine, almost invisible grain and that they are neither too soft nor too hard. The former is important from a scale point of view (too obvious or large a grain will look horribly out of scale) but also, and perhaps even more so, because it makes the wood easy to work with — to cut, shape and sand without it splintering or cracking. The latter is important, as too soft a wood (lime springs to mind), while very easy to work with, will be prone to marks and indents, while a hard wood will be just that: hard, i.e. difficult to cut and a bit of a pain to sand.

As for what you call "the darker lines inbetween", it depends on what type of deck they are supposed to represent, and at what scale you are working. With the exception (basically) of certain types of pleasure boats/yachts, those lines in real life are caulking, i.e. a substance of some kind (from old-rope-and-tar too modern synthetics) that has been pressed into the joints between the planks to make the deck watertight. Certain high-spec yacht and pleasure motor boat decks will not have caulking in that sense, though, but instead a variegated (stripy) effect created by alternating different types of wood in the planking itself.

If it is caulking you want to represent, one common method is to paint the edges of each plank, either with black or grey paint, or with a waterproof marker pen.Another way is to glue thin strips of black cartridge paper between the planks. Yet another way (but one I have never tried myself) is to use some kind of either paint or synthetic compound which is painted onto and pushed down into the joints between the planks after the deck has been laid. Excess is then wiped off to the extent possible, and the remainder sanded off after drying.

I have yet to try the third of these methods, so can offer no advice on it; of the former two, I prefer the cartridge paper. It is more work of course, but has the advantage of giving very neat and pretty caulking lines, and also of actually filling any minor imperfections in the plank edges. However, in smaller scales this method will tend to look out of scale. The cartridge paper I've used is around 0.225 mm thick, which at, say, 1:24 scale would represent a caulking joint of 5.4 mm but at 1:96 scale one of 21.6 mm. The former is well within the realms of the realistic, the latter I think not.

For smaller scales I would thus be more inclined to paint the plank edges black with for example a marker pen (test its waterproofing qualities on the wood you will use first, though).

Finally, there is the question of the plank fastening points. Again, with the exception of for example certain pleasure craft were no fastenings are visible, fullsize practice is usually for deck planks to be either nailed or bolted to the underlying deck beams (or, if laid on top of a metal deck, the underlying deck). To this end, a round recess will be drilled partway into the thickness of the plank, nail or bolt put in and fastened, and the hole then plugged flush with the plank surface with a short, round dowel or plug, usually made up from the same wood as the plank (although a contrasting wood could be used for decorative puropses on a fancy-work deck). The size of such plugs will vary, I'm sure, but something in the region of an inch would probably be fairly common. In other words, at 1:24 scale, such a plug shuld be +/- 1 mm in diameter, at 1:48 +/- 0.5 mm and so on. In other words, below, say, 1:48 or thereabouts, it is debatable whether it would be worth putting in such detail; from 1:32 and upwards I think it adds tremendously to the detail of the laid deck if it is included. If sufficiently fine dowel cannot be found commercially, it is possible to produce one's own from square stuff with the help of a drawplate (or so one is told by i.a. Harold A. Underhill; I have yet to try the technique myself).

I'm sure others will come in with more (and better!) advice, but I hope that the above contains at least some food for thought …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 04/08/2016 15:01:29

[Andrew Martin 3Participant @andrewmartin3]

Thank you

[Ian GardnerParticipant @iangardner62867]

As expected, Mattias has given a very comprehensive answer to which it is difficult to add anything useful. A couple of things spring to mind though. When using black paper or card caulking I find it useful to stick the prepared or bought deck planks on edge to a sheet of card with PVA and when dry, slice throught the card so that each plank has its caulking already attached to one side. This makes calculation of widths and application of planks easier.

Another tip is to try and arrange things so that you have no bulwarks or deck structures in place before you sand the deck. It's much easier to make a good job of this when you have a clear run at it. It's not always achievable though, especially when using a GRP hull with bulwarks in place. I mostly build in wood and plan ways of attaching bulwarks after the deck is sanded.

When sanding, the black card dust tends to get into the grain of the wood but I find use of a sharp scraper at the end eliminates this.

I find, when joggling planks into the waterway or king plank, it is useful, if you have the facilities, to grind a chisel the width of the joggling to chop out the recess in the waterway. This is usually one third the width of the plank being used if memory serves. The chisel can be made from a an old needle file and hardened after grinding.

Up until recently I always used parana pine prepared from a thicknessed plank and sliced on my bandsaw, as I remember a gent called Mike Taylor (founder of the Scale Sail Association I think) saying it was the best representation of teak he could find. I'm not sure if he was right, but I now buy planks of obeche, which is very easy to work but goes a bit dark with age, or bass wood which is a bit bright. You pays your money etc… I have never used the woods Mattias mentioned.

These are my experiences and others might have better methods, but some of it may help.

Oh, and be prepared to become slightly unhinged!

Ian

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

As Ian says, it does indeed make sense, when caulking with paper or card, to glue the caulking to the edge(s) of the planks off the model, i.e. to pre-caulk them as far as possible, and I also fully concur with his advice about removing as much excess card as possible with a sharp scraper or similar before sanding; as Ian says, this significantly reduces the amount of paper dust that will otherwise get into the grain of the wood.

A completely different way of planking decks which I have not yet tried, but have, as it were, stowed away for future reference, is the lamination technique. This can, I believe, be very useful where the planking pattern involves compound curves of the kind typically found on fancy-work yacht decks. A very good how-to description can be found in two articles on this website, both by Ron Rees:

**LINK**

and

**LINK**

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 05/08/2016 08:39:17

Edited By Banjoman on 05/08/2016 08:39:29

[Richard H DunnParticipant @richardhdunn]

Deck planking for me has always been done with 2 of the techniques mentioned here either paint or paper
The way I have done it is to use a wood called Anigre (African Birch) which is a really good match for aged teak and has very little in the way of pores in the grain, it machines incredibly well and is very stable, it also stains really well and if dyed with a pressure cooker will absorb well into the grain.
I machine planks to what ever width you can handle and to a thickness that  corresponds to the width of the plank and then seal both sides with a matte lacquer

The paper or paint is then either glued on or rolled on with a roller depending on scale, I use paper for 1/35 or bigger scale and paint for anything smaller.

The planks are then sawn to the thickness and laid, leaving only butts and snipped ends of the joggled planks to have the black applied as needed, if planks blocks are cut to final plank length you can also treat the end grain as well so butts are done just make sure you feed the black end into saw first or the blade will pull of the paper..

The whole thing is then scraped clean with a sharp cabinet scraper and sealed with matte varnish or some other compound, some use wax but it seems to collect dust so I hate that idea.

The sealing of the planks on both sides means you don't have to glue the sides of the plank and avoids a lot of mess as long as you glue it to the under deck well and seal the deck when finished as I said with matte lacquer which can then be rubbed with steel wool to make it seemingly vanish

I think 1/16 ply is too thin personally, you want to be able to press down on the deck to scrape it well, so 2mm or 3mm would be better but it depends on how many beams you have.

As far as fixing modern yachts do not have fixing from the face and are screwed from the back on a ply deck, but on older ships the bolt head are covered with plugs cut from the face of planks with a plug cutter, the problem with this is that generally to make them small enough they have to be draw out through plate to a scale diameter and that means that after being put in the deck they nearly always look too dark and will over time usually start to swell and stick out a bit…not much but enough to be annoying,I personally think that unless building at 1/24 or larger it should be left off.

They should be barely visible to look right, less is more in this case.

As far as glue goes I think its hard to go past Titebond aliphatic, I have used it in high end joinery as well as in my hand made guitars for many years  and it has NEVER failed me.

Just my opinion.

Edited By Richard Dunn 3 on 05/08/2016 11:52:52

Edited By Richard Dunn 3 on 05/08/2016 11:53:29

Edited By Richard Dunn 3 on 05/08/2016 11:56:19

Edited By Richard Dunn 3 on 05/08/2016 12:03:53

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