The deck was now ready for planking, something that I did over the Christmas period of December 2009- January 2010. I used 1/16” thick limewood strips, 8mm wide, to represent planks of around 3.5” wide at full scale. I believe pine deck planks were used on the originals but limewood is good for models because of the very fine grain and because it cuts so nicely in any direction. I very much enjoyed planking the deck – limewood is lovely to work with and the end result is very pleasing. I’m sure there are many articles on caulking on this Forum so I won’t discuss alternative methods here. For this model I used one of the easier methods – black cardboard glued to the edge of each plank, and between the ends of the planks. My method was to cut 10 lengths of strip wood, each 9” long (for 9’ planks on the original), stack them neatly on top of each other, spread PVA glue down one side of the block of planks and then glue the whole block of planks down onto a sheet of black cardboard. Once the glue had set, the individual planks were separated with a scalpel blade leaving each plank neatly edged with cardboard. I then planked the deck with these strips, working from the centreline out to each side. The photos show the deck fully planked but before sanding down and staining.