Popman:
First of all, I think you can go onto any of the public Yahoo
shipmodeling forums and talk about both plastic and wood shipmodeling.
They are not at all sqeamish about that sort of thing. The Seaways list
of the Ship Modeler's Forum would be good choices if you wanted to try
this discussion elsewhere. Both are very welcoming to all mediums of
ship construction.
Granted, Drydockmodels is a wooden ships only forum, but that guy owns
that forum and pays for it out of his own pocket mostly, so I cannot
blame him for wanting to have only wooden ships discussed if it is what
he wants. He owns it, he pays for it, its his party.
Now, I have seen (and have thought of doing it myself one day) wooden
decks on a plastic ship model. In fact, it was a model of the
Constitution I saw in a local museum several years back. Its really not
that big a deal to do, provided you can marry the wood deck beams to
the plastic hull. I think if I were to do it, I would run a strip of
basswood along the interior of the hull just below where the deck beams
would sit and attach with CA. Just measure down at a few points along
the side from where those plastic deck support tabs are and make sure
that the tops of the deck beams would come no higher than the tops of
the tabs. Then, lay the wood deck beams onto that strip, as it would
act as a ledge or beam shelf as they call it. You can use wood glue
from that point on as it will all be a wood to wood connection.
Hope this helps.
Russ