Reference · How-tos · Decks

Deck planking with caulking seam and four-butt shift

Cut the planks to length, apply the caulking seam with an oil-based pencil, scrape and mark them, and lay them in a four-butt shift from the king plank out to the margin plank.

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1. 1Cutting strips to length

   Cut the strips to 10 cm. That corresponds to a plank of about 6.4 m at 1:64, roughly what a tree trunk yields in straight plank. Measure on the cutting mat and cut square.

   10 cm per plank (the manual keeps 150 mm for the upper deck, 20.6; we followed Mondfeld)

   

2. 2Applying the caulking seam

   Blacken the sides of each plank with the oil-based pencil. It works well and comes out very black. Do it over the full thickness, so that the seam remains visible when you sand or scrape the deck later.

   

   Tip from *Hans*: If you blacken the side edges with a pencil the side is black over its full thickness; you can sand right down and the caulking seam remains visible.

3. 3Scraping and testing the grain

   Scrape the top face of the plank smooth in advance with a new, razor-sharp blade. You feel at once which way the grain runs: against the grain the blade raises splinters.

   

4. 4Marking each plank

   Put a mark on each plank so that you know which is the front and which way the grain runs. Lay all the planks with the grain the same way. When you scrape the deck once more later on, nothing gets damaged.

5. 5Fixing the margin plank and laying the king plank

   Fix the margin plank temporarily with double-sided tape, so that it comes off easily. Start in the middle of the deck with the king plank, a quarter wider than the ordinary planks, and work outwards from there.

   king plank a quarter wider

   

6. 6Four-butt shift

   Stagger the butt ends so that a seam only returns to the same place after four rows. With a trial pattern of every fourth strip the ends are 25 mm apart; according to the forum that looks realistic for an English ship.

   

   Tip from Pingu57: This is what they call a four-butt shift.

7. 7Joggling at the bow

   Start joggling as soon as the angled edge of the plank that meets the margin plank gets longer than the plank width. Stop as soon as the angled part gets too long: so only at the bow and sometimes at the stern; amidships you simply lay the plank tight against the margin plank. Symmetry by eye is good enough, the strips are not all identical by nature either.

   

   Tip from pietsan: When to stop joggling? When the angled side of your plank starts getting too long. So only at the bow and sometimes at the stern too.

Result

After one weekend the first planks were down neatly and the joggling at the bow went better than feared. In hindsight the caulking seam was not equally thick everywhere, because we cut all the planks in advance; how we solved that is in the 'plank by plank' guide.