Fliger747 wrote:
Mike:
For his escort carrier he hand planked the deck with thin and narrow wood strips. Every so many feet (10+?) there was a segmented metal strip which served for tie downs of the aircraft on deck. With a stained wooden deck, not long out of maintenance one could probably use scribed styrene or one of the Evergreen pre scribed sheets to approximate the planking. My Alaska (1:192) used this method and it looks OK, the deck is finished a little lighter and duller than the painted steel portions. However the steel tie down strips remain an issue. Model Railroaders are masters at making plastic look like almost anything. In these pages Pascal (Iceman) has done a nice job on his Nomadic with the wooden decks of that small steamer.
For a carrier with a wooden deck, the hand planking offers a major appearance advantage. To start with the planking will be little uneven but sealing and then lightly an carefully sanding level yields good results. The major obstacle is making/obtaining the planking material. Suitable veneers are available from hardwood/woodworking suppliers and you just need to find a suitable method to cut the strips. One guy for his Prinz E (could have been Bismarck) used a micro table saw to cut the strips. I have cut veneer strips with my huge cabinet makers saw but it is not suitable for the thin strips. Been so long since I planked Missouri (20 yr?) but my vague recollection was I used some sort of strip cutter with a #11 exacto blade. I have a rotary cutter the I use for paper and thin styrene, whether or not this would work with wood, I don't know.
Even a small carrier has a lot of small detail, light AA, sponson's, walkways etc, which man not be initially apparent.
Sounds like a fun project!
Regards: Tom
in 1/144 i have the opportunity to get some PE parts to cover little details as well as SK radar
this is the project i talked about, a superb job done on deck and decals but not info provided. This is in 1/96 scale though.
Also i noted in this pic that planks need to be cut in pieces, if you want to give the perfect look maybe 3 pieces to fully cover the deck width