I just receiced my Arizona Hull. Unfortunately Strike Models did not have a viable deck kit to go with the hull. So now i am going to build a deck. Any suggestions or tips or links to resources eould be appreciated
I’m working on a how-to video for making decks as part of my building a warship series- all footage is done just need to pull it together- maybe I’ll try to get it out this weekend
Since the AZ has a flat deck (no atlantic bow) it should be as simple as putting the hull on a sheet of plywood and tracing it out then trimming it to fit
I got the first video edited and posted. For material, you probably want some 1/4" plywood and some 1/8" (or 3mm) plywood. I use Woodcraft as my source since I have one local. Previously I ordered online (Balsa USA). I'm not familiar with the vendors up north - the 1/4" you can get at a Home Depot / Lowes (quality not ideal). The 3mm midwest brand can be found in some hardware or large crafts stores in the US. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aj0ZX96LUg&feature=youtu.be
The hardware store stuff can be very low quality. I have a piece of Home Depot 1/4" birch ply and it is 3 layers vs my local hobby shop 5 layer marine grade ply (3 core and 2 veneer layers). The hardware store stuff cuts very easily compared to the hobby shop 5 ply. The difference being in how densely the ply is packed. hardware store top hobby shop bottom
Agreed. I've used the home depot stuff on convoys subdeck and I think it was fine for that purpose (looked ok once coated in epoxy). I also use it for making plugs. It was a splinter machine when sanding down the edges. From a quality perspective the aircraft grade plywood from Balsa USA was #1, followed by woodcraft/hobby store, then big-box store. The cost difference correlated with quality - I've settled on the Woodcraft material as a happy medium between cost/quality.
Yeah so a lot of the hardware store plywood is using a junk product as the core layer. It's usually a product called "Luan", which is a fancy industry name for Quaking Aspen, Bigtooth Aspen, and a lot of other poplar trees. It's a junk early successional hardwood genus that we use for construction matting, glossy paper, and the like. it's terrible as a dimensional product. Fantastic fiber though. It's a shame that a lot of the fancy veneer plywoods are Luan-backed. plywood made of only Maple Veneer layers would be tough to beat. But alas. Just Birch. It has excellent dimensional characteristics, so there's that. A lot of the "Baltic/Arctic/Aircraft" Birch Plywood comes from the Chippewa and Superior National Forests and gets run through the veneer mills scattered around the Lake Superior Basin. I sell maybe 100 CCF of veneer grade Birch a year, and it all goes to the veneer mill in Ashland. You should see those decks of Veneer logs. 100 foot high stacks of 8, 12, 14 and 16 foot logs and they're all straight as an arrow. After they run them on the spindle, the logs get squared off and either become railroad ties, or Log-Mats, which are what we drop on skid trails and stream crossings as temp bridges to protect soils and stream bottoms. The manufacturing process is fun to watch.
Other than homedepot or Kent with their selection I can order from aircraftspruce.ca. I attempted to make a deck last year for the espana and really didn't want to do the same thing to my Graf spee and Arizona. I know it may shock some on what I did with espana. So I traced the hull on 1/4 inch ply wood and refined it in. In essence I used a saw to cut a sundeck. Main deck will be a 1 piece deck removable so I have full access to the interior. I know where the motors are and when I cut sundeck I left 2 cross beams. I will reinforce the deck as I have to add the cannons. Pump output is going through a rear casemate
