On my recent Dreadnought build I learned a lot. It had two decks. On the first I punched out the deck from the surround, and punched out all the "cutouts" for deck fittings. THEN I tried to remove the paper covering the adhesive. Mistake. I did break the deck in several places. On the forecastle deck I removed backing first, then carefully punched out holes, and removed side waste material- worked much easier.
My previous experience with wood deck was the Encore Olympia. That was a bit thicker wood stock, and had no trouble. I have also heard of problems getting adhesive to hold well. On Olympia I did have a few ares that came up- small areas, and putting a little CA underneath solved that. Had no problems with adhesive on Pontos set with the Dreadnought. That adhesive is much stronger. But I had to be careful positioning it- once it was down it STAYED down!