Evening All,
Many thanks indeed to all who left such positive comments at the end of my last post: I have been seriously distracted in the last month and have not had a great deal of time either to comment or to do a great deal on the current project. Added to which what I have done has been time consuming and laborious, so what follows is not a great deal but did take a lot of time and effort, both of which have been in short supply of late.
I used 1/16 x 1/16 inch (2mm x 2mm) pine strip to make the deck planking. For those who like me know little or nothing about the construction of armoured warships, the decks were covered in wood: teak in the case of British warships. This was because these ships operated in oceans and seas around the world, which meant that in the tropics and sub-tropical waters a bare steel deck would become so hot during the day that sailors would not be able to walk on it. In addition the crew quarters below the decks would have been unbearably hot. In Arctic and Southern Ocean waters in winter, ice would rapidly build up on the very cold bare steel decks and rapidly make the ship top heavy and unstable. Wood acts as an insulator and thus helps to keep the ship cool in the tropics and slows the build-up of ice on the ship in high latitude seas and oceans.
After that lesson in marine construction I glued the strips of pine to the lime base, starting at the front centre and working outwards:
After several sessions and what seemed at the time like an eternity I had managed to cover the whole of the deck area:
Making the strip fit the different curves of the barbette, edge of the deck and fill the gaps between the ventilation hatches involved another steep learning curve for me.
The decks of those old warships were teak as stated above, but the wood rapidly discoloured in the salt air and under the influence of the sun. In addition sailors were expected to scrub the decks with honeystone, an abrasive stone which was supposed to make the decks white: an affectation of senior naval officers, some of whom seemed to think that they were still living in the age of sail. Indeed it could be said that if the Royal Navy prior to 1914 had spent more time practising gunnery and other military activity than burnishing the brass and decks of the warships, they may have been more effective, even successful, when they finally engaged the enemy. However that may have been, the decks of warships were not the colour of pine strip, so I had to find a way of representing discoloured teak. Colour photographs of modern preserved battleship wood decks show that they are a dull grey.
I stained the pine with a dark red wood stain (Peruvian mahogony), to try to represent the teak deck when new:
In the process I managed to remove several areas of the acryllic grey on the barbette and ventilation covers, so these will need to be repainted later. When the woodstain was dry I used a wash of Revell Hellgrau(76) mixed with white: I applied many coats of this until I had something close to the grey in my reference photographs:
The slightly uneven colours are what I wanted to achieve: the deck areas of these ships was huge and the variation in colour on the originals was considerable. Now all I have to do is to repaint the barbette and ventilation covers before I attach the turret and guns and start to make the bridge structure which will form the rear of the display.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
