I have focused my post-credits gameplay on restoring the SS Anne, including digging it out of the sand entirely. However, I have been unable to find the iron plating recipe needed to restore the ship itself. But that changed today! I've seen other people on here looking for large quantities of iron plating to source if they don't have the recipe, so I wanted to share it here in case you also have hours of time to kill and no chill.

Within the ship, there are hundreds of unnecessary iron plating blocks in the ship itself. I first noticed this near the ground floor entrance to the ship. There are iron plate blocks between the outside wall and inside floor, completely invisible once the ship is constructed (see photo for example). I dug these out, then replaced them with the hundreds of blocks of sand I accumulated while digging out the ship. Replacing them is necessary for preventing the gaps in the flooring. There's also more underneath the ship (which you can get by either digging out the thousands of blocks of sand like I did, or by going to the bottom floor and digging down).

I know I could 3D print them, but for some reason, mining dream islands is more monotonous and boring to me than mining iron plating and replacing it with blocks on the ship. I also know I could wait until I find the recipe, but I'm impatient and enjoy a tedious project lol

I found hundreds of iron plating