Quick question for you gents. I’m gong to make a quick carrier deck for my Tam F4F, so I was wondering:
How wide were the planks
How many planks in a group? For a fictional example: 10 planks, then some sort of wider strip made out of metal? For drainage? I don’t know.
Here is an example:
I would not be surprised if every carrier was different, but if you could just pass on to me what you know, I would be grateful!
I estimate the planks to be between 3-4" wide…
Theuns
There is a nice color shot of Lexington’s deck in this collection. About 25 pics down. http://m.imgur.com/a/bLyB6
I’m surprised the bombs are so weathered. You wouldn’t think they would get so . I thought the paint would be in better condition since they where protected during shipping and all.
Those are 2X6" teak planks. Look at the shoe of the Deck Boss (white hat in the center) in the Enterprise 1940 photo. Using forensic comparatology, I believe that the average shoe size was an 11, so that would mean a shoe is approximately 12" long. His shoe covers half the plank so it is 6" wide. Start with a known value and compare it to an unknown.
Bear in mind those pictures are pre-war. The deck got painted blue.
What protection? They got rubbed together, scratched, etc during movement from the factory to the various ammunition storage facilities to the final using organizations’ bomb dump to getting loaded onto the plane. They were stored outside in all kinds of weather. They were not pristine in their paint jobs so if somebody heavily weathers a plane but the bombs are pristine, that is wrong.
Yeah, figure 6" planking… at 1:48 scale figure 1.2 inches (1/8") or .304 cm (3mm). Here’s a helpful link: webpages.charter.net/…/sd_scalecalc2.htm Or, for if you have a calculator, or a pencil and paper for us old folks, just divide the original size by the model’s scale. In this case I used 5.75" (for 6" planking) and divided by 48: 5.75/48=1.19 or 1.2"… I hope this helps, Raymond
Decimal point in wrong place----5.75 divide by 48 = .11979
1.2 would equal 57.6 inches.
Are you dead set on building one? Plenty of pretty good resin ones out there.
Groot
The planks weren’t teak on carrier flight decks, they were Douglas Fir. The flight deck wood was a lighter wood so that aircraft engines wouldn’t be damaged if an A/C nosed over and the prop struck the deck.
Teak was used for the wooden decks on surface ships.
The metal spacers between the planks contained tie down fittings for securing the A/C to the decks.
From ship specification for Essex class planks were 3 inches thick and 6 inch wide douglas fir with teak margin planks. Also, the planks under the arresting gear were to be 12 inches wide. Planks ran athwartship.