SEA > SAIL
French 36 Pounder
billp51d:
Hello Pat...I have seen the process useing thread as a caulking between planks. Impressive. My question is are you using veneer to do your U-Boat deck If so, what thickness and what width are you making the strips. I'm asking because i'm considering doing the same and laying them over the beams..
Regards/Cheers .. Bill
Pat:
Now, the patterns of planking a deck.
There are two basic patteerns, I'll call them channel-edged planking and kingplank planking. (It's just been a while since I've looked up the real terms, but this will suffice to get the idea)
Channel-edged planking is where all the planks are straight and parallel from stem to stern. At the edges of the planking is a lwider border plank (sometimes raised) with a groove or channel cut into it to drain water away towards the scuppers. The sections of channel plank are joined by any of several different kinds of scarfe joints.
At the bow and stern, where the deck planks run into the channel at a sharp angle, they are cut into the border and "joggled", sort of a saw-toothed . When the width at the tip of each plank gets down to about 1/3 the width of the plank, it's cut off square and the channel is notched to take the square end. The reason for this is that a sharp point is almost impossible to fasten tightly and will invariably leak.
The kingplank method of decking is where all the planks follow the curve of the hull, and come together towards the bow and stern. This method is usually only seen on small boats (less than say 80 feet, although I don't know if there's any exact cut-off). The planks stay almost the same width for the entire deck, so to fit them together they run into a 'kingplank', or wider plank running straight down the centre of the boat, where they are joggled into the kingplank instead of the channel plank. The same cutting off of the tips applies here as well.
Another pattern to keep in mind is butt-stepping. There are 3-5 and 7 butt-step patterns but 5 is the most common. Where the ends of two planks meet is called the 'butt' and this always occurs on top of a beam. But if all butts happened on the same beam (as you often see on the patio deck of a house) would create a weak point in the deck, so the butts are staggered in a particular pattern, called "butt-stepping". That means that the pattern of butt joints repeats every 5th plank, no matter which beam you look at, and no two pplanks together meet at consecutive beams. So the butts might be in the pattern of (plank) #1, then #3, then #5, #2 and #4, then repeat.
Another thing to keep in mind is that no plank on a ship is more than 40 feet long.
Pat:
Hi Bill.
Yes, I'm using very thin veneer to make the planks for the U-boat. I can't find my guage right now, but it's just slightly thicker than peice of of stiff paper, perhaps about 0.25mm thick, andcomes in strips 1/8" wide by 18" long. The strips can easily be cut by scissors or an X-Acto knife to make them narrower.
On one of the threads in the Type VII U-boat section, (sorry, I can't remember which one, but one of the more active ones I think) I gave a link to the place that I get the wood from. It's approx $25 for 300 strips, which is enough to last most modellers a decade at least. They do accept internet and mail orders.
If you can't find the thread, google 'Lee Valley' is the name of the company and it's under "cherry wood veneer strips" or something similar to that.
Pat:
Back to wooden decks (you can see why I'm breaking it up into smaller sections)
There's more to putting in decks that just the planking and caulking. There's also the framing aroudn 'deck furniture' (what they can the cabins and equipment permanently mounted on the decks.)
In smaller and cheaper working boats, there's usually no framing done, but in the larger and more expensive ships, and in the small, luxury boats, any cuts into the deck are often 'framed'.
By framing, I mean that there's a sort of picture frame of planks put around the cabin, companionway or major equipment.
The problem is that this frame is seldom finished in the corners like a picture frame, because again, that would mean sharp points where the different sides come together at 45 degree angles.
So again, most 'frames' are squared off at the tips making a 12 sided frame (little square bites cut out at the corners). They look very pretty, but they're sometimes the devil to cut into the deck.
Again, caulking can come to the rescue though because if you're using a paper or thread caulk, as described in one of the earlier posts, it actually has a little 'give' in it so that you can hide any small irregularities in your cuts.
Also, don't forget to cut a wider tread into the deck where the top step of a ladder comes. That piece of decking got worn quicker than any other place on the boat and so was a separate pice to make it fast and easy to replace.
Sometimes there was also a 'frame' around eyebolts let into the deck. This frame looks a little bit like a German WWII cross, like the kind they put on aircraft wings, except that the arms of the cross don't stick out very much.
Pat:
The wood in decks can be almost anything, and changed depending on when and where the ship was built.
Ships built in N America often had pine decks, which were almost white, although some of the ones from the soutern US states used live oak and sometimes a yellowish wood.
Clipper ships built in the 19th century, when there was a lot of trade with the far east, often had teak decks. Teak was prized for its durability and water-repellant oils. Teak can be anything from a very light tan to an almost dark, reddish brown.
British and French warships used a lot of oak throughout, for strength agaiinst cannon shot. Oak could go black in the cornerswhere a lot of water collects and starts a sort of mildew.
One thing to keep in mind though is that decks were never, ever coloured with a stain nor were they ever varnished. Varnish is used only in rich people's yachts. Ones that never go far from shore and not out into any kind of stormy weather.
The reason for this is that varnish is slippery when wet, and the last thing a real sailor wants is slippery deck in a storm.
This was so important that one of the main duties of sailors out at sea was to swab the deck with a 'holystone' each morning. A holystone is a chunk of usually pumice, used to scrape the deck. This took off any smoothing of the planks by many feet polishing the same part of the deck over and over again, and also ground off any splinters and slivers in the wood. (Keep in mind that sailors often went barefoot unless it was very cold, since bare feet gave much better traction thatn the leathpsoled shoes of the day. the tar used for caulking also got soft in tropical heat and would ruin the deck when it stuck to feet, and it also dripped down from the above where it coated the standing rigging to preserve it.
The stone was called "holy" because it started out the shape and size of a typical Bible.
So it's not incorrect to have a deck looking brand new on a ship that's been otherwise strongly weathered. The deck WAS new because it was scraped or sanded clean on a regular basis. The type of wear would show up more as a dishing in the treads of ladders and at the openings to cabins. also around the windlass and at entry ports.
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