Realistically getting plastic decks to look like wood has been a challenge for ship modelers for as long as companies have been making model ships. Well, unless you are
Kostas, then it's no problem. But, for the rest of us mere mortals, it's always been something of a work in progress, copying others ideas and incorporating them into your own. From washes to
extreme masking, there have been many attempted solutions. Not only was painting a chore, but many manufacturers (hello, Tamiya) broke the decks into multiple pieces, with the seams in the worst possible location, making it hard to eliminate the seam without destroying the raised planking lines on the deck.
If you couldn't manage to successfully blend your seams without destroying the deck, the other option to finishing your deck, other than painting, was to cut sheets of wood or small individual scale planks and try and fit those to your decks, like I've been doing to my Tamiya
Bismarck. This, while visually interesting, is tedious and time consuming. And, unless you are incredibly anal retentive, not entirely accurate.
With the last decade (give or take), companies began to release real wood decks - very thin pieces of wood with planking lines etched into the wood. Many of the first to be release were carrier decks. Soon afterwards, custom cut decks for other capital ships began to appear on the market, until now almost every ship that is released comes with an aftermarket wood deck.
For the most part, I had little interest in wood decks until I had tackled the aforementioned Bismarck project. But, after seeing other modelers use them with great success on some of their builds, I was intrigued. I also was never going to go the individual plank route ever again.
So, when Scaledecks.com released their deck for the Trumpeter Z-25, I figured this was a good time to try out a wood deck. The deck was small (only two pieces) and relatively inexpensive (only $15.00 list) - seemed like a good starting point. Additionally, Scaledecks gives you choices of finish: Maple, Teak, Photographic Paper, or their newest product, Tinted Wood.
I placed my order through the Scaledecks.com
website, settling on Maple. Not to long afterwards, a stiff cardboard envelope from California arrived. When I opened it up, not only was my order inside, but John - the owner of Scaledecks.com - had also included a teak deck and photographic paper deck for Z-25, but a tinted wood deck for the 1/350 Zvezda Borodino! John also included a nice note thanking me for my order, and explaining that he enclosed the additional decks as samples, since he'd like my opinion on the different types of decks they offered. Well, then, without further ado, here is a short review of the Z-25 decks (broken out into multiple posts).
The decks arrive in a plastic wrapped sleeve with a thin heavy paper insert. The deck is on one side, the instructions on the other.
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File comment: Teak, Maple, Photographic Paper in their packaging
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The next few photos show each type of deck - a photo of the name and then a photo of the deck itself.
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The teak deck out of the package
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It's super thin!
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The instructions are a simple one page affair - nothing more is required.
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One thing I notice when I opened the first package is how thin the heavy paper insert is. My suggestion would be to use a piece of cardboard instead, as the decks are extremely thin and could accidentally break if you aren't careful removing them from the packaging.
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Martin"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne
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