05 - Refurbishing the deck planking.

Well, I'm finally back at it. No, I didn't spend all of the last six months down in Florida - just five weeks or so! The rest of the time, I've been enjoying our summer. But now that we're officially into fall, time to pick up where I left off. In fact, I'm going to skip a few of the items that I've already done some work on - I'll get back to them in future posts - and bring you up to speed on the deck refurbishment in the meantime.

To start with, the original decking was very poorly executed. The manufacturer used a single piece of what looked like laminated particle board. This was then grooved to simulate planking. Unfortunately, the result was imitation planking that was much wider than the scale would indicate, and the router grooves were far too wide. In addition, the planking was parallel for the total length of the deck, whereas the real planking was curved at the aft section.

Original model decking. (Marks were made during removal of deck furniture.)

As noted in a previous post, I made use of cherry wood strips sourced at Lee Valley. I initially purchased 1/8 inch strips (which would have more closely matched the full-scale width of 5-6 inches) but decided that they would look a little small. So instead, I chose to use 3/16 inch, which equates to a full-scale plank width of 8-10 inches.

Various sizes of cherry wood strips (1/8, 3/16 & 1/4 inch x 24 inch).

Having experimented a bit, I chose to stain the strips and blacken the edges to highlight the planking, once installed. The stain you use is a personal choice but I attempted to match the plank colouring of the Bluenose II. However, it is difficult to stain cherry to match oak, and in the absence of first hand observation, have no way of knowing how close I came. (And since the original decking of the Bluenose II no longer exists, it having been relegated to a wood chipper during the recent "renovation", we'll never know!)

To save time, I bundled 20-30 stained strips together and used spring clamps to hold them fast.

Cherry strips bundle and clamps.

Once clamped, I lightly sanded the bundled edges and them used a permanent marker to paint the edges black.

Using a permanent marker to blacken the edges of the strips.

Once the strips were dry, I glued a starting strip down the centreline and then worked outwards to either side of the ship. In the forward section, the planks are installed parallel to the centreline, whereas in the aft section, they are curved parallel to the sides.

Installing cherry wood strips on forward deck.

Before and after sanding of cheery strips.

Once all the strips were installed, I elected to simulate end joints and peg-ends randomly over the deck. There was no indication of full-scale plank lengths in the Jensen book. (I could have cut strips to various lengths prior to gluing them to the deck but felt that this was an unnecessary complication and could be simulated just as effectively.)  To aid in making the simulated peg ends, I fabricated a little template jig to locate the peg-end holes on either side of the simulated joint. The joint itself was made by using a metal awl to scribe a line across the strip wherever a simulated joint was to be created. The awl was then used to pierce the strip on either side of the scribe to simulate peg-ends.

Jig for locating peg-end holes on either side of the simulated plank joint.

Once the deck covering was complete, a light sanding was in order. This necessitated another coat of stain to make the surface uniform in colour. I then sealed the deck with a coat of clear polyurethane; I've used gloss to date but suspect that semi-gloss, or even matte, might be more appropriate.

Completed deck. Note the curved planking on the aft section of the deck.

Next time, I'll try and cover some of the items I've already fabricated.