Real wood decks

yeti0010 wrote:

I am looking into building tamiay's 1/350 Bismarck and would like to add a real wood deck to it,  how much work am I looking at, what should I use to attempt this, and how should I go about doing this any advise would be very well recieved thanks

How much work are you looking at: tons. What should you be looking at before attempting this: White Ensign Models Brass Detail Sets and painting tips on how to make plastic decks look like wood. You will have to remove lots of deck hardware and detail, with loss and scratchbuild replacements when you mess 'em up. Take lots of before photos and chart out what is removed on the back of the plastic decks. Like I said, lots of work. What materials might you want to look at for the wood itself: model railroad HO lumber, it comes in individual planks in various widths. I'm not familiar with the the width of the planks or timbers on the the Bismarck but I can tell you they vary from ship to ship. I have a great picture of the WW2 era USS Texas showing part of the ships company in considerable detail which shows crew members feet spanning the width of two planks and encroaching on a third. Your mileage may vary.... WS

yeti0010 wrote:

I am looking into building tamiay's 1/350 Bismarck and would like to add a real wood deck to it,  how much work am I looking at, what should I use to attempt this, and how should I go about doing this any advise would be very well recieved thanks

check out vectorcut wood decks. i have the emden one and looking at varyag but am into soviet ww2 armor and eastern front towed guns right now. this will give you an idea of the amount of work when the deck is already built. all deck hardware has to be cut off, sanded down and glued onto the new wood deck. decking a wooden ship model is a breeze in comparison.

Ok thanks looks like I will be building revells Schnellboote instead of the bismarck.

  in 1:350 sale, 6" is 0.0171428", Northeastern scale used to manufacture .013" X 1/32" basswood that could be laid on, on edge to rperesent 4.5" wide planks. With time, and patience, and a good step by step plan of action, it can be done. The basic plan is to choose a photo/photos of what the finished model is supposed to look like. Compare that to the existing model, and list all the "removes". When that list is done, and everything on the kit that will not be on the finished model has been recorded, the second list, the "adds", can be compiled. The project then becomes remove all the unwanted detail, and check it off the list, then start building, and adding, using the second list as a guide.

  Oh, you will have the model almost complete, when you discover that piece of detail you missed putting on the "remove" list.