School for Shipmodel Building School for model ship building

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

a fad for deck planking was the use of Holly. This might of come from Harold Hahn who used Holly or from a mistaken holly stoning a deck.
Holly is stark white with no feature and no variation in color and extremely expensive. There are other woods that give a deck more of a natural appearance.

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

You may have noticed while the deck was being built it was dirty from using a China marker or also called a grease pencil for caulking.

I am giving serious thought to foregoing any simulation of caulking. Just let what Titebond II shows be it. Keep the deck at the rear of the stage.

About the Holly - much of these ideas came from Europe - where Holly is yellow - they do not have snow white varieties and it seems - no Blue Mold either.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

years ago on another forum i think it was YAHOO but there was a big debate on using Holly for decking. Those snow-white holly decks were not in any way realistic. Real decks were gray or shades of grayish brown. As a result, i got a run from model builders looking for blue stained Holly. The mold turned the Holly shades of gray. for awhile i could buy stained Holly very cheap because people did not want it. But woodworkers turned the dirty Holly into fine art and now the dirty Holly commands very high prices

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

now the dirty Holly commands very high prices

You can insert "also" between "Holly" and "commands".
It is a damn shame for those of us who scratch build 'stick and string' too.
Holly is "beautiful" wood to work with. It bends about as well as can be reasonably expected. The grain is tight, difficult to see, no pores, not too,many knots, the wood hard - cuts have edges crisp, readily accepts a dye - beats the hell out of Ebony for black wales after a proper dye job. I got a trunk load of a yellow variety for free from a cousin who owns a tree farm in Caroline County. Not enough for framing but enough for everything else. The Dogwood was also nice to get.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

Before i start planking the upper deck i have to install the upper stern timbers but i decided to make a change very late in the build which at this point will require cosmetic surgery. So let's back track to the building of the stern, the end timbers are the same wood used for the framing of the hull and deck and as you can see here, they extend up to the railing.



that end timber is what you see here extending above the cap rail and supporting the railing around the upper deck. The cap rails, railing and the stanchions holding the railing are all done in Walnut so those end timbers will stand out because they are done in a different wood. I could stain them to match the rest of the cap rails and railing or get rid of them.



you can see them sticking up as glaring white posts.



so i cut them off

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

What i should have done was to make the stern timbers out of Walnut but it is way to late for that. Installing the stern timbers

i cut a template to set the angle of the timbers and as you can see they are way to long. I will trim them down when it comes time for the railing.



i figured it would be easier to plank the deck around the timbers rather than cutting a square hole for the timbers to fit in.



there isn't much holding the timbers in place just a shallow square hole so i put in the upper section of the outer stern plank. Once the deck in in place i will add knees to the timbers.