A deck planking problem - shaping narrow grooves between adjacent planks.

[Dr PR]

I have been planking the decks on my MSI model and ran into a challenging problem.

 

 

The planks are pretty thin (1/16 x 1/16 inch or 1.6 x 1.6 mm) and flexible. They are nibbed into a nibbing strake along the edges of the deck. The deckhouse sides are not parallel, so the planks have to be tapered to fit along the house sides. Planking at the bow and stern is pretty simple, but these deck sections meet along the house sides. Keeping the decking pattern straight and parallel to the centerline was pretty tricky in this area!

 

The planks have 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) black paper "grout" glued along the edges.

 

The last plank between the forward and aft planking is nibbed into the nibbing strake and sandwiched between two neighboring planks. Because it is the last plank it has paper grout along both edges.

 

It is a very tight fit into the groove between the neighboring planks. And because the planks actually varied quite a bit in width it was a problem getting the last plank to fit into the groove.

 

Here are a couple more photos to illustrate the problem.

 

 

 

QUESTION: How would you go about widening the groove so the last plank would fit? This is a pretty narrow groove!

 

The small file shown in the pictures was 0.055 inch (1.4 mm) thick, only slightly thinner than a plank. It didn't remove much material and I had to be careful not to foul the opposing top edge of the neighboring plank. And it tended to remove more material from the bottom of the groove (not good) than along the sides.

 

What other method would you suggest to remove very small amounts of wood from the sides of the planks along the groove?

Edited 20 hours ago by Dr PR

[Thanasis]

Hi. Did you try with a suitable finger nail file or with folded sandpaper...?

Thx

[druxey]

If I understand your problem correctly, I would use a sanding surface. Rubber cement the paper to a flat surface. You can then gently sand the plank edge, holding it at a slight angle to produce a subtle wedge-like cross section. Test fit until the plank almost seats all the way into the space it needs to occupy. Then  you can glue and press it all the way home for a tight fit.

[Dr PR]

Thanasis and Druxey,

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

I don't want to shape the plank - it is already shaped to the desired width, and has the paper grout glued to it. I am looking for ways to widen a narrow groove, preferably keeping the more or less vertical sides of the groove.

 

I suppose I could glue sandpaper to a thin enough stiff object so it could fit down into the groove.

[CPDDET]

Not sure if you want to make the investment but you can purchase chisles that small.

Dockyardtoolsusa.com

[amateur]

Just thinking aloud: can you scrape the sides of the groove using an x-acto 11 blade (preferably one with its tip broken of, to prevent the knife catching in the bottom of that groove.

 

Jan

[Dr PR]

Good ideas!

 

If you look at the second photo in my original post you will see two hobby knives with #11 blades. The blade on the right has been ground down to make a narrow chisel about 1/2 plank width.  I used it to make the initial cut in the nibbing strake where the plank end is nibbed into the strake.

 

I also used the sides of the "chisel" to scrape the edges of the groove to widen it. It did work, but it was slow going. On the other hand, I did want to remove material gradually until the plank just fit into the groove with a slip fit. So slow was good.

 

I didn't mention this at first because I didn't want to bias answers.

 

I do have a set of wood chisels that I use to remove material from grooves (but none as narrow as 1/16 inch). Usually I use a saw to define the width of the channel and a narrower chisel to gouge out material between the saw kerfs. I don't know that I have a steady enough hand to work a plank width chisel between the adjacent planks and keep a straight edge along the sides of the channel.

 

Any other suggestions?

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

4 hours ago, Dr PR said:

I don't want to shape the plank - it is already shaped to the desired width, and has the paper grout glued to it. I am looking for ways to widen a narrow groove, preferably keeping the more or less vertical sides of the groove.

 

  Perhaps the suggestion from Thanasis was misunderstood.  There is a groove space, and the last plank has paper grout on either side - so at present it is a tad too wide for the groove.  His suggestion was to cautiously sand  the edges of the plank held at an angle, so the wear will not be seen from the top, but merely reduce the width at the bottom of either side of the plank - hence the "wedge" shape if you could see the plank in cross section.

 

  With a narrower bottom, the plank should start to go into the groove before getting tight halfway in.  Several trial fits and further adjustment may be needed until the plank will drop in 2/3rds of the way into the groove. Then there are 2 alternatives:  1.) Put a small amount of glue into the bottom of the groove and press fit the 'wedged' plank so that it will compress its width only near the top.  2.)  Use a 'riffler' file (one that has a bend in it - a handy tool for ship modelers to have) to cautiously work a little from either side of the groove near the top.  Just a little will do, and the friction between the slightly wedge shaped plank and the reverse wedge of the groove will be reduced so the plank will need little compression.
 

 

[Dr PR]

Johnny,

 

I think Thanasis' suggestion to use sandpaper is a good one. If the paper was wrapped around something a bit narrower than the groove, so the sandpaper was a slip fit into the groove, it would remove material from both sides in equal amounts, keeping the sides more or less parallel lengthwise. That is a potential problem because I want the planks/grooves to have straight edges and more or less the same width through their entire length.

 

Making the grooves "\_/" shaped runs the risk of having different widths at the top edges (edges not straight), and that would be visibly noticeable in this application (deck planking).

 

For what it is worth, I did file the bottom edges of the paper "grout" to make the bottom of the plank a bit narrower. This helped get it started in the groove. But I didn't want to make it too tight because the paper is easily distorted if you force the plank into the groove, pushing the paper up and possibly out of the groove. If that happens you have to start all over again to replace the distorted "grout." So you really need a groove wide enough for the plank to easily slip fit in place.

 

I should also say that I really didn't have this problem when planking my topsail schooner deck because the planks were 5 mm (about 1/4 inch) wide. They did not bend easily. These 1/6 inch planks bend like wet spaghetti! And I was able to place straight runs of planking that were nibbed only at the outboard edges - no tapering to fit around a deck house with non-parallel sides. The MSI built posed some new challenges.

Edited 4 hours ago by Dr PR