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.
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
So i thought of scratchbuilding a realistic wooden deck, i believe KGV class decks where oak although i stand to be corrected 
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 
would be greatly appreciated.
