The Ship Model Forum

The picture is uploaded onto the Web-space that is behind my own Web-site (see below). So I only need to put a link to it: [img]...[/img]

wefalck

That looks really nice...how did you get that pic right here on the page...?

Yes, I would agree that planking in real wood in scales below 1/100 are likely to look out of scale because of the grain of the wood, even when using very dense woods, such as cherry, pear, or boxwood.

Painting certainly is a better option. I would spray-paint a base-coat in a light ochre acrylics (I recently used Prince-August Air 'bois', which is equivalent to Vallejo 'wood', I believe) and then applied washes of burnt umber with varied intensity to individual planks. Below is an example in 1/90 scale, but the technique doesn't change. In this case I also added some grime/weathering using black and white pastel, which may be overscale in 1/350. You can use watercolours instead.

[img]http://www.wefalck.eu/mm/maritime/models/botter/BotterModel/BotterModel-088.jpg[/img]

BTW, decks were/are almost never made of oak. Typically, teak or pine are/were used. On kits I would also fill in the engraved seams because they are grossly overscale. The caulked seams are almost flush with the deck. They may appear slightly depressed in cold and/or dry weather, or slightly rised in hot/wet weather due to the expansion/contraction of both the pitch and the wood as a function of temperature and humidity. This effect, however, is in the order of a millimetre or so in real life.

wefalck

A direct link to them?

Ok I uploaded 2 pics to imgur under zadmiral...I guess that's how its done.

OOPs HTTP://www.imgur.com

Yes painting in 1/350 is the best.
On my 1/48th Montana. I laid 3/32 inch planks(basswood) one by one. I took a sharpie and drew a line at ONE upper edge but not the ends(it bleeds on the ends). Then glued them to the deck using permatex black rubber sealer available at any auto parts store.
I put the sealer only on the edge that is on the bottom of the plank where it would be next to the previous plank.
Make sure the black edged side faces out on all planks.
When you place them on, press them down a little with a pencil eraser and some of the sealant will ooze out between the planks.
You can remove the excess with a tweezers after 5 minutes and it looks great.
Then after 24hrs,I drilled small holes where the hold down bolts might be.
After sanding to level the wood, I applied two coats of formbys low gloss tung oil, mixed with a small amount of red mahogany stain.
Then after those two coats dried I applied two more coats of just the tung oil. Its waterproof and looks pretty good.
I would imagine it would work in any scale as long as you can get the planks small enough.
I tried real hard to get actual teak to work but its too coarse of a grain.
If I knew how to put pictures on here I would post them...
Z

1:350 might be an ossue for real planking but i have done it nicely in 1:196. I used a fine grained veneer with a peel off stick back, cut the strips and applied one by one. After applying i took a flat finishe iol such as a tung or Danish and lightly coated the deck to help with adhesion. Light sanding with a 600 grit wet dry paper made for a pretty convincing deck. I do think you could do this in a smaller scale. A few experiments might see how close to scale boards you can get. Decking on Missouri appears to be about 4". For 1:350 thats close to 0.01". Small!

Good luck. Tom

Thank you Dirk for putting me in the picture.
It is most strange how when painting a model i have no problem with getting the result i require but WOODEN DECKS now thats a different story maybe i am being way to fussy.

I think it will be quite hard to get a ralistic looking deck without painting in 1/350. But step by step:

1. Even if the original planking was done in oak, oak vermeer ist comoletely unsuitable for the planking of the model because the strukture of oak is quite gross. So you have to look for vermeer with a very dense structure (like cherry) to get a realistic effect.

2. The best way to get a realistic deck ist to plank it plank by plank. This is the way I do it on my 1/100 ships. On the other hand planks in 1/350 would be only 0,5 mm or so wide, so real planking could end in quite a torture.

3. The laser-cutted decks availiable look like lots of things but not like a realistic deck.

4. I think painting might be the easiest way to get a good looking deck. Just paint the whole thing in a suited brown, give it a darker washing followed maybe by a little drybrudshing in a slightly lighter tone. Than pick single planks with an even more lighter (or darker) tone. That's all.

Good luck

Dirk

Hi Guys,
My next project is to build all Tamiya KGV class battleships in 1/350 scale and i dont even want to attempt a realistic looking deck by painting :mad_1: So i thought of scratchbuilding a realistic wooden deck, i believe KGV class decks where oak although i stand to be corrected :big_grin: the problem is i have no idea if any company produces planking in the UK for 1/350 models and could oak veneer be used and what size thickness would i require? any guidance tips or a kind offer to construct these decks for me :lol_3: would be greatly appreciated.