V-Groove Siding (0,50 x 1,5 x 0,33)

A deck, a jetty and a wooden walkway

Grooves spaced 1.5 mm apart come from converting sixty thousandths of an inch and represent the most commonly used pitch for a ship's deck. A sheet half a millimeter thick can be laid over a finished hull, trimmed to the outline and left to dry under a weight without the shape of the sides being lost beneath it.

Where the pitch meets the scale

In 1:35 scale this pitch gives a plank 5.2 cm wide, in 1:72 scale 10.8 cm and in 1:100 a straight 15 cm. That covers the deck of a smaller vessel as well as a wooden jetty, a footbridge over a stream or the floor of a cargo barge. On larger ships the same sheet also yields cargo hatch covers and boarding on the superstructure.

• a groove pitch of 1.5 mm, converted from 0.060 inch
• a sheet thickness of 0.50 mm
• an area of 15 x 30 cm, the grooves run along the longer side
• the traditional choice for ships' decks and jetties
• supplied as a single sheet

So that the deck does not look new

A real deck is not one single color. Mix three close shades of wood and apply them plank by plank so that neighboring planks differ. The seams between the planks tend to be dark with pitch, so work a dark gray glaze into them and wipe the surface across. Finally run very fine abrasive paper over the area so that the edges come up and the color stays only in the grooves. Around the superstructure and the anchor windlass there is the most foot traffic; there the deck fades fastest and tends to be noticeably more worn than the edges by the railings.