Part III
by Laurent Gontier-Versailles

To eat fruit is healthy…

Yeah , right !

You all will think I'm nuts…
I'm not , as first , anyone knows that fruit is healthy , indeed , but more interesting are fruits crated in those little wooden crates , built of 2 or 3mm's thick ply.
Not the best quality , but as I'm a kind of a scrooge , I try to limit my expenses on modeling and such crates will be very useful for the building of my decks & my superstructures .

Here under a picture of what I mean…

Why put the deck on now ?

My former experiences with "plank on frames" scratch built models tells me that the main deck has to be put on the frames before the "deck beams part" of these frames may be sawed to allow more access into the hull.

Believe me , I ruined once one of my models by not doing that , it just did split open , the upper part of my hull was half an inch broader at the deck than at the turn of the bilge .
I could al last fix the problem , tightening the hull to the shape it had to have , gluing again a lot of deck beams , glue the deck and saw the beams where needed…

I did it too on Lucy ( to saw some deck beams without having put the deck ) , as you can see on some pic's in my first article, to see if it would happen , but as the distance between each frame is set at 58 mm's , the ribs were tight enough to avoid this problem

That main deck on RMS Lusitania is the shelter deck for about ¾ of her length & the promenade deck on the forward part .

Here under a little drawing to let you see how the structure of that deck will be built.

The two portions of deck I have put till now represent the steel decks , on which the deck planking has to come , and will thus be covered , so the quality of the wood used for this first layer is not important

The ply from these crates I use for my decks will be covered by a layer of "Bristol" cardboard , more explanations will follow in part 4 ( the plating )…

Observing the pictures , you will have noticed the deck camber , which will remain the same for the decks coming above .

On the picture above , the construction of the deck stringers is very good noticeable as is the camber.

There under a drawing showing why these decks had to be put before the representation of the plating could be commenced …

On the drawing above , you have :
The plating on the side of the ship , connected to the deck by a angle bar , facing another angle bar .
On the right side of that second angle bar , there is the visible deck , in reality laid plank by plank , in my case , it will be a 0,8 mm thick ply plank , teak colored , on which I will draw with China ink all the seams separating the planks , once it has been varnished ( two or three layers of satin varnish ) and sanded .

Between the angle bars , there was a layer of cement poured , to protect the steel under it and to allow a good run for the rainwater or sea water to go straight to the scuppers which lead that water to the side of the ship , through descending pipes .

I have no idea for the moment how I will represent that cement , but I have a lot of work to do before I get there…

So , that's it for the third article , the next one will debate over the plating , first the bottom plating and then , the sides …

As this is a very intricate process , it may take some time to write that following article , as you know , any modeler has sometimes to suffer some delays due to certain obligations ( shopping , gardening , fixing a door , refurbishing the kitchen , greasing a bicycle chain , etc…)

That's called : "being in love"…

See you

Laurent