What’s your advice on the best way to fasten mahogany decking to a PT frame – screws, nails, or one of those special purpose fasteners. The Deck is about 20 ft square, two levels, hot tub, in the Northeast. It seems to me the trade off is between labor, aesthetics and strength.
Edited 11/24/2002 8:39:46 AM ET by Joe
Replies
countersink deck screws then fill with left over saw dust and exterior glue. My DeWalt rifle (as I call it) screw gun sure makes things easy. In Mahogany you may have to use a counter sink bit before screwing but its sure worth it if ya ask me. In cedar it countersinks itself. One other option is to use your nail gun and shoot glue covered finish nails(they come that way). What I've done was to use some PL400 between each board before nailing. Never had a problem. Solid as can be and you hardley see a nail head.
Be well
Namaste
Andy
It's not who's right, it's who's left ~ http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Edited 11/24/2002 10:43:39 AM ET by Andy Clifford(Andybuildz)
If you have the bottom access, I'd vote for a proprietary fastening system from below. I'm taking a wild guess that if you're going w/ mahogany, you're interested in a nice looking result. It'll cost more and take longer, but why blemish the stuff w/ fastener holes?
I'm with BEMW, if the people are willing to pay for mahogany they most likely want a top quality looking deck, so screw holes in the top take away from that, the systems they have for attaching from below work pretty well so thats what I would do, I might ever use a little adhesive on the joists to make sure it was secure for years to come.
Also might want to get Pro-Deck to throw in his two cents
Joe, I just finished a 16x32 mahoghany deck and I used the deckmaster system for fastening my boards. The deck looks sweet without seeing any fasteners from above. Bid accordingly is all I can say. Definetly a 2 man job and figure it will take you twice as long with a hidden system like deckmaster. Did I mention to bid accordingly? cc
Good looking deck, any pics of the final result?