Interesting new product

Generally I find it "OK", but not great. The issue of burying deck furniture is a real one.

Also it seldom fits exactly. It takes some horsing around to get it to lay down in all of the corners, and that is tough with something covered in contact adhesive to begin with.

Also the pitch lines are way too pronounced, and the plank ends are either not present, or not right.

And I find the coloration way too uniform.

However, the product and application that Tilley is suggesting or at least bringing to our attention sounds as though these problems could be eliminated by staining, cutting to length and setting a pattern correctly.

Not my photo.  

And, as I said, at least with the reading glasses I use in modeling, I could see no grain in the decks I have used (the one that came with the deluxe version of the Oregon and the Pontos set for the Dreadnaught).  The wood (basswood?) is extremely tight, small grain.

My concern isn't so much that the whole manufactured deck would be of a uniform color.  Wood decks generally are pretty uniform.  What worries me is that the grain pattern of the one-piece, precut deck would stretch across all the "planks" - and that wouldn't look right.  But I'll withhold judgment until and unless I actually get my hands on one of these things.  The prominence of the grain, of course, varies tremendously with the species of wood.  The Constitution deck in Mr. Stauffer's photo certainly looks good.

I have built two ships with wooden decking- in one case the wood deck came with the kit, in the other it was aftermarket. In both cases the wood was something like basswood with an extremely fine grain- you are not able to see the grain without magnification.

Now, the color is uniform from plank to plank, which may put off some people.  But this brings up an issue.  Woods like teak weather rapidly to a gray, rather than tan.  Did frequent hollystoning keep it looking tan rather than a weathered gray?  In other words, should we use a gray wash on these decks?

I took a look at the planking and if you look at the first picture it looks as if the thickness is actually more than the hatch coamings, which means for the model shown all the coamings, and as a result, all the hatches would have to be rebuilt. There doesn't seem to be any spec on just how thick the planks are.

Another  new product to consider is the scaledecks decking for the Revell 1/96 Constitution. Its real wood (maple) and only about 8/1000's thick. No need to mod anything. Its so thin that its translucent. I will be experimenting w/ painting the deck different colors since it effects the look. The pic here is the spar deck. It's just a dry fit and w/ my crappy camera you can't see the nice variation of coloring in the planks very well. There's no butt pattern, but easy enough to add. I will post a thread when I finish it up.

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