Now that all the cabins fit onto their combings and the decks reasonably well, it's time to fit the "king plank"....the centre plank on the deck running from stern to bow. It is interupted by the cabind but it is a centre point to which the deck planks are laid.
However on these boat models the kit will be supplied with a printed deck overlay and they will but up to that King plank.
This was made from a strip of 1.8mm ply 10mm wide, just wider than the printed ply planks on the overlays, and was glued down with aliphatic resin glue.
As I had made the original main decks from templates that I had drawn and cut from card, I used these again to make the templates for the overlay decks. They had to be marked and cut down as they have a gap around the combings for the cabins to sit between and also a small space between the edge of the bulwarks and the deck, and so all templates had again to be marked , cut to size and then drawn on to 1.8mm ply before the ply was cut out and finally offered up to the boat for final tweaking.
The will then be marked as per plan in pencil, lightly with all planking and hatch markings, before being given two or three coats of cellulose sanding sealer to seal the markings in.
Once rubbed down with wire wool the markings will be drawn over with black draughting pen and ink as would the planks look after being caulked.
Finally each piece will be photocopied at my friendly print shop, and it will be the photocopies of the deck overlays which will be traced onto draughting paper for making the screen prints for the production deck overlays.........a bit of a long drawn out( excuse the pun) process but aty least I'll know that the overlays will fit to the decks the way they should, if the model is built the way it should be.
The photos shown below in order show the king planks being laid where the deck and cabins allow, the templates for the overlays,the overlays on the FM & Mrs S, and then the overlays of Mary Stanford, Field marshall and Mrs Smuts and H F Bailey, in that order.