I'll get to that assembly soon enough.
While I could have next painted the planking, I decided to tackle the inevitable. It was time to sand the deck. Make or break the project. No sense in wasting any more time.
The short version is that it worked out mostly as I hoped.
I started with some test decks, but moved quickly to the main event. Surprisingly, the very rough 80 grit belt was manageable in short bursts to remove the bulk of the material. A 360 grit belt worked well to smooth the deck down to a surface fine enough to take the glue applications. I can confirm that if you do press a little too hard for a little too long, you get some heat build-up and a small, funky patch and layer of styrene that looks very much like a dark wood knot wherever the maximum point of pressure was. It’s denser than the surrounding styrene, but it doesn’t deform the deck. One needs to just gently sand it off as much as possible as a separate layer before continuing with the rest of the deck.
Now, in truth, I couldn’t take the deck down the full 0.02”. Doing so would have compromised some of the edges of the flight deck. I did manage to take off a consistent 0.13” across the whole deck. It helps to have a very good set of digital calipers handy. There was a lot of checking the deck thickness along the way. Still, I probably spent no more than 30-45 minutes in total time actually working on the deck, plus more time checking and fussing about. Clean up was not terrible.
Note: In order for the “L” brace to lie evenly and flatly along the entirety of the back of the flight deck, some surgery on the molded support trusses underneath the aft end of the flight deck was needed. Basically, a channel had to be cut/sanded down the axis of the flight deck and through this array, so that the brace could lie at the same level as the back of the flight deck. That wasn’t a problem for me as I intend to replace all that trusswork with PE. If anyone were planning to retain the kit trusses, then the brace can only extend to about half the distance through this area, to where the boat cranes underlie the deck. I think the brace would still be effective through the aft end of the flight deck.