Sorry to be jumping into this thread so late, but I just discovered this site a week or so ago. (GREAT site, great discussions, great detail and pix btw)
I can't help wondering why not just scratchbuild the deck?
I had a deck from the kit I'm building (I would have given it to you but sorry, I've destroyed it while using it for templates) and decided that it was easier to scratchbuild a new deck and being made out of real wood, it looks much more realistic than any manufactured deck.
(That doesn't hold true of some of the earlier steel decks of course as PE works better for them).
There are several different methods of scratchbuilding a wooden deck, depending on the level of detail and realism you want and how much work you want to go to.
The simplest is to use a sheet of thin plywood scribed or inked with the plank lines on it and just mark or cut in where the various hatches are. This plywood is available at most good hobby shops that carry materials for sailing ship models. It's only 1 pc, but the advantage is real wood grain (unlike the PE parts) and none of that slight offset that you often get when joining two plastic deck parts.
More detailed is to use the same plywood plank and a tiny Dremel tool with a jig and route out the spaces between the planks to represent the drainage through the deck. But otherwise,this is still like the above method using a single sheet for the whole deck. You need a steady hand and a jig to get the cuts straight, but the result is very satisfactory.
More difficult still, but even more effective, is to put in all the beams (their location can be determined by various methods) and then lay each and every plank as a separate piece. This allows you to space the planks realistically and lets some of the detail underneath show through. It means that you need to put in a lot of filler pcs in certain areas where the planks cross the beams, and isn't for those without a lot of patience, but the result is worth it since every plank will have slightly different grain and colour and look VERY realistic.
The most detailed method, which is what I'm doing, is to not only install the beams under the deck and individual deck planks, but to make hinges fand frames for each of the hatches so that they open to reveal the detail of the pressure hull underneath. I wouldn't recommend this for everybody since it's a LOT of work and results in literally, thousands of extra pcs., but the result is a deck that if done well, in closeup looks like you're standing on the real thing.
Of course, the last method will add at least a year to the build time, but you end up with a museum quality model.
