Bellerophon -8 deck planks. Glue-stain-finish?

by John

Now that the deck plank panels have been made I have been considering how to glue them to the underlying 1mm thick plywood, AND whether to stain the planks and if so what colour AND whether to apply a coat of matt poly-urethane finish. AND in what order? glue – stain – finish? stain – glue – finish? stain – finish – glue? And what colour stain??

So I looked at many pictures of models of warships 1750 – 1820 on “Ships of Scale”, read all of my modelling books (not much help there), and thought about how oak and pine would have reacted to years of use on a 74 gun ship.

I concluded that it would have been very unlikely that the deck planks would have been painted, since they were scrubbed daily with abrasive holy stones. The wood would have been exposed to salt water, rain, sunshine, bare feet, gunpowder, tar, blood, (floggings, injuries including battle injuries), cannon movements, etc etc.

Examining photographs of USS Constitution, HMS Victory, HMS Warrior was not overly helpful because they have all had modern wood preservative finishes applied, and they have not had many of the previously mentioned surface challenges. At least hopefully not exposed to much blood.

First I applied some stain which I found in my workshop, labelled “redgum/jarrah”. Hmm. That sounded woody and possibly attractive. I also found some black stain, which I rejected as being too dark and bleak.

The redgum/jarrah was too orange, too unreal, too fake. Hmm. Maybe rename the colour “Moron”. Then I asked SWMBO how to turn the black stain into a light grey. “Simple” she said. “Try diluting it 1:3 in turpentine”. So I did. The right hand of that panel is just the diluted stain, the left hand part is diluted stain plus one coat of polyurethane. I think that the right hand bit looks best. I like the enhancement of the plank joins and trenails. But the polyurethane will slow down humidity-drying cycles. Decisions decisions.

At least I have decided to stain –> glue –> maybe polyurethane