Bellerophon -6. Optimizing Gun Deck Planking for Model Ships

On my 1:72 model the lowermost gun deck, which had the biggest guns, the 32 pounders, is not visible, except for the gun muzzles poking through the gun ports.

But the gun deck above, which had the 24 pounders will be partly visible on my model, so some more care is required. On the original 74 gun ships the planks on the upper gun deck were about 4″/100mm thick. The outer planks, where the guns sat, were usually made of oak. The inner ones were usually of a softwood like pine, but of a similar thickness.

I had decided to make the gundeck planks on my model from huon pine, because it has very fine figuring and although almost white, when coloured with a stain, or tea leaf water, or something similar, should look authentic.

At the 1:72 scale, each plank would be 3mm wide, and about 80-90mm long. (About 10″ x 20′ in the original). The gun deck at that scale in the model is approx 52 planks wide and 8 planks long which equals 400+ planks altogether. Times 2 gun decks, plus the poop deck and fo’castle.

Most modellers glue one plank at a time.

But always one for the easier solution, I thought that maybe my new laser cutter might offer an easier, quicker, lazier, solution.

So I drew up an accurate plan of the entire gun deck planking, including every trenail, every join.

Then divided it into sections which my laser cutter cutter could fit (400 x 415mm) , and using the maximum width of the huon pine (45mm, but with machining allowances). That came to 5 rows wide, by 2 lengths = 10 pieces altogether. Actually the centre section has 4 hatches, so that adds 5 more planking sections, less 1 = 4. Plus 8 = 12 sections altogether. A bit complex, but 12 is a lot fewer than 400+. And it simplifies somewhat the placing of the end joins and the trenails.

This is my cad planking drawing for the upper gun deck. It took only 2 whole days, and then some revisions. You might need to magnify an end join to see the trenail patterns. The short red lines show the ends of the planks, and the long red lines are the 5 main strips of planks. The middle strip is further divided into 5 smaller pieces by the hatches. Penetrations for the masts and capstans are circular. I had to further divide the four 650mm side plankings into 2 pieces each, to fit my laser cutter. I decided that the division should be at the end of individual planks, which required a staggered line. Stay with me….
So I spent quite a few hours figuring out how to cut the complicated perimeter of each piece, AND engrave the lines of the plank side and end joins AND engrave marks for each trenail. The actual laser cutting of each piece took about 2 minutes. I do admit that there were quite a few failures, but at the end I was churning them out about about 5 minutes woe to go. Note the staggered end cut at the top of the piece pictured.
I placed the pieces approximately in position on the ply deck as they were cut…..
The cut pine tended to curl a bit, but light weights flattened it out….

The cut ends look a bit obvious, but I hope that appearance will be less obvious when they are actually glued to the deck, stained, and a matt varnish/lacquer applied. (photos to follow).

Of more concern is the darker areas of pine. I am hoping they will also be less obvious when the planks are darkened. I will do some colour testing before I start gluing.

Some hand fitting will be required around the bulkhead stanchions, but will be hidden behind the bulwark planking and water- ways.