The Ship Model Forum

Personally, I am not a big fan of real wooden decks because of the porous structure of these veneers ...

Is the veneer already in place? If not, I would give it a couple of coats with sanding filler (preferably solvent-based for better penetration) with a light sanding.

If the veneer is already in place, I would airbrush on a coat of matt acrylic varnish.

In both cases the filler/varnish prevents the wood from being smudged by the following treatment. If you apply dry pigment or washes to raw wood, it rubs into the pores and you end up with dark or light streaks, which is not what you want.

So, now the deck is ready for light acrylic washes. Use very dilute washes to built up the effect. I would work just with some white. You can apply a very light coat over the whole deck to begin with. Then pick out single planks, again with a veeery light wash. Some can be made also a tad darker using a veeeery dilute wash of burnt umber. That will get you there. Acrylics dry fast, but it may take an hour or two to make them really resistant against applying the next wash. It's easy but needs a bit of patience.

Finally, I would give it a light coat of acrylic varnish, to pull the variable sheen from the washes together.

I don't think solid pigments would give you a comparable effect.

FWIW, Tamiya makes several different sets of weathering powders.

I am using wooden deck stickers from Pontos. however Pontos deck seems too creamy yellow for weathered teak deck, which should be silver gray.

other aftermarket decks try to be cute and pick out individual planks in various shades of brown, but that also seem unrealistic. wooden deck seems to weather to a basically uniform color.

so i am wondering if there is a stain or other method to stain wooden deck stickers to an appropriate silver gray teak color? i once saw a powder sold in model railway stores that is meant to give model trains the right color for weathered wood. but i can’t find it again