Stratomonkey

That looks fantastic. The detail there is incredible!

I do plastic kits as well, it's just that I haven't got around to those yet There is still plenty of time to completely mess it up though!

For those who may want to know, (and for those who don't) I have finally decided on how the deck will be planked. I have finally decided to go with Colron Georgian Oak wood stain for the lower gun deck. . For the Lower Gun Deck this will be from Tanganyka strips with afore mentioned wood stain. The caulking between the plank edges will be thread and the end butts will be black paper. Im going to do a 4 Butt Shift Pattern Wood stain decanted into a manageable bottle. Planks are brush painted (one coat only) and dabbed down with kitchen towel to remove excess. Cut deck planks. I cut a strip at a time into 9 pieces and thats enough to do the whole length of this deck. 85/86mm long and approx 4mm wide. to sand the edges I clamp a group of 5 and a group of 6 planks together and its backwards a forwards on the emery a few times to make these groups the same width The plank cutter has issues (for the purposes I want to use it for anyway), namely that it isn't the most robust piece equipment and has a lot of give and flimsiness about the cutting handle, which replay does not help with a 90deg. cut angle on the blade. So I decided to insert a few lolly sticks into the grooves of the cutting handle and I super, superglued them in. No the handle does not flex or bend and gives a pretty accurate 90 deg. cutting angle. And for my purposes the cutting guides there make great clamps to hold a 6 inch rule OK, so now the planking ........ First and foremost I have decided to Plank this deck uninstalled on the model and then make all the cuts to fit or once I reach the slots then I may install it then and continue to finish it "In harness" Also, I've decided, upon looking at various photos of peoples visit to the Victory at Portsmouth to include a wider plank as my king plank. I noticed that on the quarter deck of the real thing the centre plank does indeed seem to be wider than all the others on that deck. I can't say that I noticed this for the poop deck though. Im going to do this wider centre plank on all decks except the poop deck So far I have laid the centre plank, and one row on the Port. The idea for the caulking is to lay out the thread at the width of the planks, cut a black paper end piece and glue them in. My initial idea was to drizzle superglue down the length of the caulking thread to make it considerably stiffer just to make it that bit easier to handle (the thread is clamped either end of the deck). Getting the thread the right plank width is a serious faff but I'm willing to put myself through this torture for the best possible outcome for this model. I have a few options for how this deck would be finished. Im considering Danish Oil (natural), super thin Superglue or a matt varnish of some description. However a lot of scraping and sanding will be needed. I need to cut another bowsprit, the first met a fate that saw it being consigned to the "maybe it's a good idea not to put that on the model" pile. I still need to cut the Lower fore, main and mizzen masts to length to get them for trial fitting too. there's a lot to do here and getting the order right is a hard one. Most of the time building this is taken up by reading the build manuals, thinking about the build sequence, reading the manuals again and rethinking the build sequence. I still have the hull bulkheads to shape but that really won't happen until the all the side gun port patterns and the lower gun deck have been fitted. That's it for now. Cheers

So this weekend, while I am waiting for my extra deck planking to arrive along with the set of Admiralty Paints for the Victory, I began work on the first part of the Bowsprit, so far so good. Well, so far , so ....... well, ok (fair to piddling as the saying goes). This is my first piece of carving and whittling gin about 45 or so years so Im bit out of practice. however we will get there Im sure. So now, it's just a case of tapering this part from 12.7mm down to 9 point something mm's. The square bit on the end is already to size. Oh and the other thing is that it needs to be fettled to fit., or the recesses in the bow bulkheads do Ive spent the last week venturing down the rabbit hole which is the colour tone and shading of the decks. Achieving this is still an ambition because I have tried various colours for the levels of decking I want The reason for starting the Bowsprit now is that I want the this along with the Lower Fore, Main and Mizzen masts to be seated properly with some confidence that when the time comes they will be just a good interference fit with the minimal amount of gluing, if any glue at all. I Right now I am also planning on fitting the gunport patterns so I have 3 on each side to fit. Also I am aware that somewhere along the line there is a potential mis-alignment between the outer and inner gun port patterns because the the gun ports are lined

I guess that all that rope has its own function in one way or another but thanks for reminding me of that particular impending task. One of the great adventures into the unknown for me; rigging "The Ship"

Thanks, I think Ill be doing planking for some time to come.

Hi, I can only echo that sentiment. I'd like to have a go at this ship at some point in my life. I shall be watching with great interest

@Bertie McBoatface Thank you. Hopefully, you will get around to that sooner rather than later @ArnoldAmbrose Very sound I would say. @Faraway But I think it all comes down to being a labour of love. Near me over this weekend is a machine and hand tool exhibition. Im definitely going along tomorrow to see what's there. For now I am plank cutting, the whole deck btw

True, I don't have to do the entire deck. I have that thing called "I know most of it won't be seen but I know it's there" syndrome and besides where better to practice the fine art of deck planking. If it turns out crap then it doesn't really matter too much and its first ever attempt at doing this so I thought I would make a meal of it! lol

Staining the false deck planks. I tried various methods but have come across a way of staining that I think works really well. I bought a small tin of Light Oak Satin Finish varnish. I also bought a tin of Danish Oil, why I did so was because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Neither of these gave me the colours, shades and overall tones of the deck that I wanted. As the varnish is acrylic I could thin it out but as I was contemplating this a weird thing happened. More later on down the page. In the photos there are three different finished planks. Running down the centre is the kit supplied Tanganyka strip ( I thank that's what it is) this is far too reddish and too mahogany like for my taste so I have decided not to use this for the decking. Either side of the centre planks are the lime/basswood strips I acquired. Before I go on. I calculated that I would need 47 planks at the widest part of this false deck. So I thought I would lay it out on some upturned masking tape to see. My king plank obviously in the centre running the entire length of this deck with 23 planks placed either side of it. Along the length of this deck, were I to plank the entire length of it would be 9 planks at 85mm in length. All told that would be 423 planks just for this deck alone! The gun deck would be in the same region, then the Quarter deck and Poop, not to mention the forecastle. so we are looking at 1,000plus planks for this ship! So far I've cut 54 + the 42 in these photos . The jig is holding up well too 😀 So the light oak proved to be too dark for my taste too, the supplied Tanganyika too red. So for some reason I reached for the instant coffee and used that to stain the wood instead. Just let it cool and then liberally apply with a brush and let it soak in and leave to dry. Apply a second coat if its not dark enough. The lighter planks in the photo are the coffee stained ones. It looks like once I have refined my recipe then I will use this as a stain. Cheers

I imagine they would be a bit cautious about a fire on board. I'm afraid that LED's are beyond my current level of capability and won't happening on this ship. Maybe they are for another project which I am already thinking about.

Hmmm, yes, some interesting ideas there, @Bertie. I didn't quite think of it like that but looking through some photo's today of the different deck levels the lower decks do seem to be darker in shade, that maybe the lower light levels but they certainly wouldn't get the levels of UV light that the exposed quarter and poop deck would, so they do tend to show a lighter but greyish shade. It looks a bit like a patio decking that's not been treated or oiled for a while and has bleached in the sun which of course would happen I guess. However I don't really like that effect but that's another thing to experiment with at a later time. LED's eh? again that is interesting but LED's, I never considered it. If I did something like that then I'd have make that decision now and start making the lanterns and planning the routings of the wires because it would look quite nice if lanterns lit up the gun deck through the gun ports as I have a few sets of 1/72 scale gun crews. Power supply and final mounting plinth and studs would also have to be decided upon sooner rather than later. I wouldnt use the LED's that come in strip form as it would bug me that they were there. There would have to be LED's in lanterns hanging by the gun ports as in the photos I have seen. I have the photo etch lanterns that come with the kit and at 1/72 scale they are not big so Im not sure if I want to do that or not.

Thanks, yes it is a fine kit, rather large but manageable I think but I am intent on doing it a long term project, maybe two or so years.

Yes, those planks are quite dark, darker than I expected them to be for a light oak varnish but that was my first attempt. Over the next few days I intend to try out various thinned out mixtures once I find some clear acrylic satin varnish. I think the right mix would be somewhere between 10 - 25% light oak and 75 - 90% clear. I have plenty of IPA alcohol and may use that as a thinner if I need to. All of this, bearing in mind is just for the lowest false deck. Im not too sure what shade or colour the other upper decks are going to be yet. More decisions to make I guess Thanks, yes, the jig is rather handy and works great.