Caulked Deck for a Wooden Ship Model

Start with a flat wooden deck slab upon which will be mounted the individual planks. If the deck is to eventually be curved, it might be best to wait until the deck slab is mounted in place and then add the planking. The planking must be done and sanded down before the bulwarks are mounted. Since our deck was only slightly curved, we mounted the planks while the deck was flat and then curved the finished deck assembly to mount onto the bulkheads.

For the 1/41 scale Virginia 1819 schooner, by Artesania Latina, we used 5/32 by 1/16 basswood about 2 inches in length ( approximately 4 mm by 1.5 mm by 50 mm ) which was thicker but narrower than the 5 mm by 0.6 mm strips included in the kit, but this gives more room to sand it down later. This made the caulked planks a scale width of about 7 inches and length of 7 feet. These are probably a little smaller than actual planks for the period, but they looked right to us. Still, if we were to do it over, we would go with 3/16 strips to give a more accurate scale 8 inch width planks. We chose to stagger the deck planks in a 1-2-4-3 sequence, again, because it looked right.

First cut the planks into the desired lengths. They should all be the same. We used “The Chopper” from NorthWest Short Line.

Use charcoal construction paper for the caulking, as thin as you can find. Black is too dark for scale effect. For gluing the planks to the deck, either super glue or wood glue can be used. We used Elmer’s Wood Glue for our ship model and super glue for the demonstration in the photos. Super glue is very unforgiving as to placing the planks correctly the first time. Wood glue allows more time to push the planks flush with adjoining planks and it also saturates the paper caulking which provides thinner join lines.

Select a manageable set of planks, about 10 to 12, and set them on their edge with the ends exactly even. Use a square for this. On a strip of the construction paper paint a thin layer of glue and then place a set of planks edgewise on the glue.

The paper may be glued to the edge of the planks with superglue. Take a thin strip of paper, just larger than the end of the set of planks, put glue on the surface, and place it against one end of the planks. Do all sets of planks the same way.

After this is dry, which will be seconds if you are using super glue, use a new razor blade to trim the excess paper from the plank set.

Carefully cut through the paper attached to the end of the set to separate the ends of the planks.

Flex the set and cut to separate the planks.

Start with more than enough planks for the entire deck.

Planks will now have one paper edge and one paper end. Care should be made to ensure that all planks are oriented the same way to make sure there is caulking between all planks and none have double calking, which would be noticeable.

Mark the sub-deck center line and then outline the center deck plank along the length. Then draw a perpendicular line across the center of the width of the deck, another the length of a plank from this one, another halfway between the two, and two more halfway between those. This will give five lines perpendicular to the length of the deck indicating where the planks should start.

Glue the center plank to the deck. Then add the remainder of the planks on the centerline to the fore and aft. Use a straight edge to keep these first planks exactly straight.

All planks are mounted consistently with the paper to the front and to the right. We used a 1-2-4-3 stagger for the planks.

Special care should be made to ensure that the stagger is consistent.

When dry, sand down the deck with rough sandpaper, then gradually finer grits. The initial dark grey color will eventually get sanded away with the finer grits.

When finished and sanded, the deck should look like this.

We are still deciding if we will add some representation of treenails, which were used to fasten the planks to the bulkheads.