Decks planking

The last few days were spent on a tedious task : the deck planking.

It's one of the main differences between the Amati and the Hachette/Amati kit : in the first one the decks are not already planked, and a bundle of planks is provided. On the second kit, the decks come planked.

This is a long and repetitive task.
Several improvements can be brought to the deck planking :
- leave some space for the waterways
- place the expansion joints
- achieve an accurate planking around every element on the deck (we can see on the few pictures of Titanic and Olympic that the planking interrupted before the various elements and was replaced by a piece of wood taking the shape of the element.)
- reduce the planks width, because they are too wide for this scale
- vary the width of the planks on the forecastle deck, as we can see on several original pictures.

I chose to add the two first options, and discarded the others. It lacks accuracy but I think that in this scale the difference will not show very much...

The method is quite simple :
- glue down a plank upon all the desired lenght
- allow some time for the glue to dry a little
- simulate shorter planks by cutting the main plank using an X-acto

And so on...

Be careful about the first plank! It will determine the orientation of all the other planks, so be sure to glue it perfectly straight!
Usually, I drew a straight line in the middle of the bridge, and used this line to glue the first plank straight. For the bridges possessing slots for the keel, it is much easier, because you can use those slots to guide the first plank, and even fit the deck onto the keel to use it as a guide.


On the edges, take care to leave some space for the waterways by cutting the planks to the right shape. I used styrene templates for those waterways, we can see them on the pictures, held in place by bits of masking tape.