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[guitar man]

Hi all
Sorry to ask this as i think it has been asked before but search as i may I cannot find it What wood would normally be used for planking  a battle ship deck ( the ship in question is a King George V ) many thanks in advance for any comments
 
Regards as always Tony

[Colin Bishop]

The traditional material was teak but you may find that the extent of the planking varied from ship to ship, less extensive in the later vessels.
Colin

[Netleyned]

As Colin says, Teak was used on warships.
The quarterdeck was the main area plus boat decks
and the area around the Bridge.

In modelling lime wood or similar has a scale grain
appearance.
Teak decks were holy stoned and scrubbed to smooth and
clean them and the tropic sun bleached them white.

[Rob Wood]

Just to add a bit about teak decking...

The reason teak was the wood of choice for decking was its durability, strength, and natural water resistance qualities. Interestingly, according to something I just read on the subject, the Nelson class battleships originally carried fir decking, to save weight. This was replaced with teak in the 1920s, due to fears that fir would not stand up to the shock of main gun broadsides.

Teak decking is very difficult to model realistically, though, because as it ages, it changes color from a light tan to a silver.

Teak starts off looking like this:



But on the deck of a ship, exposed to the elements, soon begins to transition:



And ultimately looks like this:

[Colin Bishop]

One point about warship decks is that during wartime they were frequently painted, sometimes as part of a camouflage scheme.
In Napoleonic times, the splinters produced when teak built ships were hit by roundshot were generally considered to present a dangerous risk of infection. However, the current view seems to be that a teak splinter wound is less likely to result in festering than, for example, an oak one.
I believe that Rodney & Nelson did indeed have fir decking initially as everything possible was done to save weight to get within the treaty restriction of 35,000 tons. These efforts were a bit too successful and both ships came out significantly underweight, the difference could have been used for extra armour.
I have also read reports that in wartime pine decking was used on some RN ships as teak was unobtainable.
Colin

[raflaunches]

I know that on Insect class gunboats which were sent to China had fir planked decks fitted on the Yangtse station due to the heat, condensation would build up under the unprotected steel decks. On these vessels the planked decks were more for comfort of the crew rather than anything else. Mind you, they probably had the cleanest/scrubbed decks in the entire Navy due to the amount of pomp and ceremonial duties they undertook in China.

[Rob Wood]

On painted battleship decks:

I found an interesting photo of the USS Missouri (BB-63) in Measure 32 Design 22D. It's not in color, but you can see the patterns applied to the horizontal surfaces -- taken circa August 1944. I'm not 100% certain of the colors used, but the history.navy.mil site speculates: Dull Black (BK), Light Gray (5-L) and Deck Blue (20-B).



Interesting stuff for military geeks, hey? 


Rob