Decking Part 3 - Planking

Firstly I roughly laid out the planks according to which size needed to go where, then I shuffled them around switching port with starboard to get an even colour across the deck. I found two light or two dark strips next to each other tended to stand out a bit. Once I was happy with the overall look each teak plank was roughly cut, spaced out with off cuts to give a 6mm caulking gap and screwed down with over size washers.

All the edges were removed at this point and laid on top of the roughly cut planks, marked-out again using another off-cut to give the 6mm spacing, cut using a bandsaw and then belt sanded to the precise curve.

Once this process had been repeated round all edges and both skylights each plank was masked on the top face, spaced and screwed to test fit the whole deck, taking the time to draw round each washer so when it came to glueing each plank and each screw could be positioned easily and quickly. 

Decking Part 2 - Edges

I made this moulding to cover the edges of the ply and frame the new deck. At 18 x 20 mm it was small enough to simply bend and screw in to place without steaming.

Cardboard templates were used to cut out the shape of the wheel house and maximise the amount of decking I could get out of each plank.

Rather than steaming the outer edge plank to achieve the required curve I laid 72mm wide strips close to the edge, marked out where to cut with this home made jig and cut and sanded them to a neat fit.

The same process was then repeated to cut the inner most edges to form a continuous 44 mm plank around the newly fitted edges and a 50 mm plank round the wheelhouse.

Decking Part 1 - Design

Teak decking the fore cabin roof was a job started by Alex Ritchie who very neatly laminated two pieces of 1/4 inch marine ply across the entire area. I picked up where he left off beginning by using a simple laser clamped to the wheelhouse roof to get a definitive centre line.

Using measurements taken from the middle outwards I was able to create a CAD drawing, and from there begin designing the layout based on the original 1908 Simpson Stickland drawings using straight wide planks. 

With all the calculations done I ordered over 100 meters of planned to size teak decking strips from Robbins Timber. Next step being to figure where each one goes according to my calculations..