Deck Planking
Like many tasks in model building, deck planking does seem on the surface to be seen as a chore at best and downright "to be avoided at all cost" at the other extreme.
To that end I have put up this photo story that shows that it really is none of the above and while it's never going to be a quick fix for a planked deck, approached in a methodical manner and a little patience most people can do it and achieve good results.
The only "magic" involved in the whole process is the final cleaning with the white plastic rubber.
The woods that I have used are Lime, the light colour and Pear the darker one for no other reason than I like the contrast in colours and the lack of any pronounced grain patten.
Anyway back to the rubber.... with all the planks stuck down and with the card trimmed back as near as you can to the timber planking you can sand the whole area with 120 grit aluminium oxide paper ( this rarely clogs up) stuck to a flat piece of timber or MDF around 18/25mm thick. Not only will this get everything down to the same level but will leave you with a lovely grey mess all over your beautiful new deck. This is where the magic comes in...brush or vacuum this dust off and then with a white plastic rubber, as large as you can obtain just rub it flat over the entire deck doing a small section at a time pushing down hard so that the plastic gets hot and starts to form little rolls of a dry goo, it's completely dry so not detrimental to the timber and as if by magic your new deck emerges from the mess all pristine and as nature intended with crisp caulked joints.
Generally this treatment leaves the timber smooth enough to varnish but if not then repeat the process with finer paper and rubber until your happy with the smoothness. One word of warning though, don't through over-sanding with finer paper compact the fine grain of the timber to such a degree that it starts to look slightly glazed, you will have compressed the grain fibres too much making the application and take up of stain or varnish patchy. If this does happen than all is far from lost, spotted before or after sealing let the varnish dry if already applied and scrape back to the bare un-compressed wood and try again.
The card used for caulking in this case is 0.023mm black card available from many stationary stores. A3 allows for longer strips to be cut therefore reducing the the rather tedious task of joining lengths. If you do have to join lengths make sure that both ends of the card butt tightly together and check that they do not pull apart when laying the plank, filling the gap is a task you can do without!
I would suggest that you use a thickness of card to suit the width of your planks. There are several sizes available and also many colours. With some timbers a brown may look better whilst cream or white can be used- the choice is yours.
To that end I have put up this photo story that shows that it really is none of the above and while it's never going to be a quick fix for a planked deck, approached in a methodical manner and a little patience most people can do it and achieve good results.
The only "magic" involved in the whole process is the final cleaning with the white plastic rubber.
The woods that I have used are Lime, the light colour and Pear the darker one for no other reason than I like the contrast in colours and the lack of any pronounced grain patten.
Anyway back to the rubber.... with all the planks stuck down and with the card trimmed back as near as you can to the timber planking you can sand the whole area with 120 grit aluminium oxide paper ( this rarely clogs up) stuck to a flat piece of timber or MDF around 18/25mm thick. Not only will this get everything down to the same level but will leave you with a lovely grey mess all over your beautiful new deck. This is where the magic comes in...brush or vacuum this dust off and then with a white plastic rubber, as large as you can obtain just rub it flat over the entire deck doing a small section at a time pushing down hard so that the plastic gets hot and starts to form little rolls of a dry goo, it's completely dry so not detrimental to the timber and as if by magic your new deck emerges from the mess all pristine and as nature intended with crisp caulked joints.
Generally this treatment leaves the timber smooth enough to varnish but if not then repeat the process with finer paper and rubber until your happy with the smoothness. One word of warning though, don't through over-sanding with finer paper compact the fine grain of the timber to such a degree that it starts to look slightly glazed, you will have compressed the grain fibres too much making the application and take up of stain or varnish patchy. If this does happen than all is far from lost, spotted before or after sealing let the varnish dry if already applied and scrape back to the bare un-compressed wood and try again.
The card used for caulking in this case is 0.023mm black card available from many stationary stores. A3 allows for longer strips to be cut therefore reducing the the rather tedious task of joining lengths. If you do have to join lengths make sure that both ends of the card butt tightly together and check that they do not pull apart when laying the plank, filling the gap is a task you can do without!
I would suggest that you use a thickness of card to suit the width of your planks. There are several sizes available and also many colours. With some timbers a brown may look better whilst cream or white can be used- the choice is yours.