I feel silly having to ask this question, but it’s been a while —
I’m replacing a covered porch floor with 1×4 mahogany decking, and will be using Sikkens SDR to seal all 6 sides of all the boards.
Being mahogany, I plan on predrilling holes. I don’t want to use galv. finish nails with my gun, planning on using SS screws. I bought 2 1/2″ #10 SS screws. (I would have preferred #8, but they didn’t have any).
Am I right to pick the SS screws over the galv. nails?
Thanks for any comments.
Replies
Stainless will last much longer, especially near salt water. I think you made a good choice! #10 is a bit large, but I guess you'll have to ask yourself if the large screw head bothers you aesthetically, or in this case, the customer?
Dustin
You probably knew this, but McFeeley's sells SS squaredrive trimhead screws just for decking, with heads that are prefinished in various colors. A nice dark brown head would be darn near invisible.
Thanks guys...I kinda forgot about Mcfeely's, I'll use them next time (now that you mention it I think I saw those screws in the most recent issue). Glad to hear you think I made a good choice. I wish I had #8 instead, but I dont have too much of a choice from my supplier....Another store does have trim head SS #8's either 2 1/4 (would this be to short?) or 3" (which i see as way to long for 3/4" thick wood).I suppose I could maybe go with teh 2 1/4" trim heads — which would provide 1 1/2" of bite into the joists.....What do you all think? I deffinately agree that trim head would look much better, slightly counter sunk even. For the front two porches I'll look into ordering from McFeely's.
The #10 screw will fit nicely in a 3/8" hole, and then you can glue in tapered plugs and sand them flush. The plugs will hide out quite well, better than a trimhead with no plug and I think they'll hold better. The trick will be to drill the hole only as deep as needed, to preserve something for the screw to hold down. In 5/4 decking I drill about 7/16" deep and it works fine, in 3/4" decking I think I'd try to stay around 5/16".