DeformedTree
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Sparktrician said:
Borrow an ex's Planner, or rental [wink]. Clearly you don't make a living selling planer knives.
How to save early 90's Redwood decking?? - Rotting framing, rusting screws stuck
- Thread starter Vtshopdog
- Start date
Borrow an ex's Planner, or rental [wink]. Clearly you don't make a living selling planer knives.
After getting all the broken screws removed (PITA!!) next step was aggressive sanding to remove as much old finish and decades imbedded dirt from the wood as possible. Was hoping to spare my planer cutters some abuse and took opportunity to get a new tool. Sanding also exposed a few screws I missed and was a chance to asses overall condition of the planks. Lots of splitting, rotted ends to cut off and some degraded sections. Once cleaned up it was a lot more pleasant to handle the wood.
Justified purchase of a new Makita Dual Mode sander (Rotex knock off, $290 with a HD coupon and just couldn't justify $600 for another Festool sander). Overall happy with the function and dust collection considering how much material I took off it was pretty clean to run.
[attachimg=1]
Finished sanding the planks, things are looking up:
[attachimg=2]
Next up drilling out the screw holes and fabricating a couple hundred 3/8" plugs plus a handful of 1/2"
Searched like crazy for some Redwood dowel but only thing I found 12" segments marketed for Harry Potter CosPlay wand fabrication so plug cutting it was.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
Last, gluing in a whole bunch of plugs. Messy!! I had Tite Bond all over my fingers and and was reminded of kids in elementary school that would cover their fingers with Elmer's glue then peel off the film
[attachimg=5]
From here it's on to some plank repairs then on to the planer.
Justified purchase of a new Makita Dual Mode sander (Rotex knock off, $290 with a HD coupon and just couldn't justify $600 for another Festool sander). Overall happy with the function and dust collection considering how much material I took off it was pretty clean to run.
[attachimg=1]
Finished sanding the planks, things are looking up:
[attachimg=2]
Next up drilling out the screw holes and fabricating a couple hundred 3/8" plugs plus a handful of 1/2"
Searched like crazy for some Redwood dowel but only thing I found 12" segments marketed for Harry Potter CosPlay wand fabrication so plug cutting it was.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
Last, gluing in a whole bunch of plugs. Messy!! I had Tite Bond all over my fingers and and was reminded of kids in elementary school that would cover their fingers with Elmer's glue then peel off the film
[attachimg=5]
From here it's on to some plank repairs then on to the planer.
Attachments
The only significant rot in redwood was on a plank that was butted against a vertical riser to next level of deck. This plank was sandwiched between a framing ledger board below and the redwood riser above. It was a dirt and moisture trap, hence the rot.
For rebuild I wanted to rest the vertical redwood riser on the ledger board to eliminate the sandwich but this required a 9' x 13.5 foot piece of redwood unobtainable in my area.
Solution was to repair splits in existing riser then get out Domino and joint it to a couple inch wide strip from a newly purchased 16' redwood 2x4.
Roughly 2' long split in existing riser
[attachimg=1]
Belt and suspenders? How about dowels, glue, Dominos and a few screws for good measure:
[attachimg=2]
"Hey dad, put down that stupid tool and throw the ball for me!"
(she's really good at rolling her balls under my feet) (all day long BTW)
13.5' rip cuts were right at the ragged edge of length for my joined 2700 and 1400 rails in a single pass
[attachimg=3]
13.5 foot joint ate a lot of glue. I mostly build cabinet and furniture type stuff and it was kind of liberating to just make a mess with squeeze out everywhere and no worries as next step would be 60 grit sanding and planer.
[attachimg=4]
Wrapped up and ready for planing:
[attachimg=5]
For rebuild I wanted to rest the vertical redwood riser on the ledger board to eliminate the sandwich but this required a 9' x 13.5 foot piece of redwood unobtainable in my area.
Solution was to repair splits in existing riser then get out Domino and joint it to a couple inch wide strip from a newly purchased 16' redwood 2x4.
Roughly 2' long split in existing riser
[attachimg=1]
Belt and suspenders? How about dowels, glue, Dominos and a few screws for good measure:
[attachimg=2]
"Hey dad, put down that stupid tool and throw the ball for me!"
(she's really good at rolling her balls under my feet) (all day long BTW)
13.5' rip cuts were right at the ragged edge of length for my joined 2700 and 1400 rails in a single pass
[attachimg=3]
13.5 foot joint ate a lot of glue. I mostly build cabinet and furniture type stuff and it was kind of liberating to just make a mess with squeeze out everywhere and no worries as next step would be 60 grit sanding and planer.
[attachimg=4]
Wrapped up and ready for planing:
[attachimg=5]
Attachments
This step was pretty straightforward. Ended up removing about 3/16" thickness, mostly from topsides. Installing the planks "bottom side up" was not really an option - most of them have 60 degree cuts on one end and inverting would require removing 8-12" of length and I was already going to have some issues refitting the boards. Didn't hit anything to overtly damage my cutters, but even with aggressive pressure washing and sanding there was lots of imbedded grit that doubtless took a toll on them.
Picked out one of the more beat up planks and pushed it through planer until a reasonable surface emerged and settled on that thickness for all of them. Adopted routine of dropping cutterhead and taking one pass off top then inverting board for a second pass on bottom at same thickness to kinda-sorta keep things balanced. Was concerned boards would go wonky from removing mostly from one side but was not an issue. After thickness planing done hit the edges with a power planer to fully clean them up.
Planing:
[attachimg=1]
Pushing these new replacement 16 footers is a long walk. Was getting some snipe on outfeed maybe 50% of the time but it's a 16" board and really doesn't matter on a deck.
[attachimg=2]
Prefinish tops, sides and bottoms. I really like Penofin red can for outdoor finishes
[attachimg=3]
Reclaimed planks pre-finished and ready for installation:
They came out quite a bit better than I was expecting and even the plugs look OK.
[attachimg=4]
Large rolling trash can filled with my afternoon's sawdust:
[attachimg=5]
Picked out one of the more beat up planks and pushed it through planer until a reasonable surface emerged and settled on that thickness for all of them. Adopted routine of dropping cutterhead and taking one pass off top then inverting board for a second pass on bottom at same thickness to kinda-sorta keep things balanced. Was concerned boards would go wonky from removing mostly from one side but was not an issue. After thickness planing done hit the edges with a power planer to fully clean them up.
Planing:
[attachimg=1]
Pushing these new replacement 16 footers is a long walk. Was getting some snipe on outfeed maybe 50% of the time but it's a 16" board and really doesn't matter on a deck.
[attachimg=2]
Prefinish tops, sides and bottoms. I really like Penofin red can for outdoor finishes
[attachimg=3]
Reclaimed planks pre-finished and ready for installation:
They came out quite a bit better than I was expecting and even the plugs look OK.
[attachimg=4]
Large rolling trash can filled with my afternoon's sawdust:
[attachimg=5]
Attachments
Building around old construction is always harder that going from scratch. Add in the angular shapes of the deck, my use of reclaimed stock and things got a little bit interesting. Sometimes the fun of this hobby comes from solving problems, so I guess I had a plenty of fun...
Things got slightly sideways right away when laying the first (new) plank. This board butts against my newly fabricated vertical 2x10 where the old construction had it tucked under the vertical riser. Right away found the vertical framing had a roughly 1-1/4" outward bow and I ended up scribing in my first plank. Ok, whatever, get out the jigsaw and chop away. Had planned to have 1/4" gaps between planks and dry fitting the scribed board with a gap looked bad: The grain and bow combined to make it look really crooked, flush fitting the plank looked pretty good so flush it was.
The miters on this portion of deck are over 60 degrees, rendering each plank about 9" shorter than the one next to it. I quickly discovered that by scribing and flush fitting my first plank all the other planks were moved about 1-1/2" laterally and now needed to be a couple inches longer. My longest reclaimed board then came up short and the issue cascaded down the line to successive planks with some improvised Domino joinery as solution. Working with new stock this would not be an issue.
Scribed in first plank:
[attachimg=1]
I rarely use stock protractor fence on my MFT but for cuts beyond 45 degrees it's really good option to have:
[attachimg=2]
Rhut-Rhoo, two boards in a row too short. Time to get out the board stretcher (DF-500). Someone with more brains and less free time would simply butt the planks and screw them down but I opted to hit them with a couple Dominos and some TiteBond. Very limited in my choice of what pieces to use here, so got a weird grain match, but looks good enough. Will be interesting to see if these end grain joints degrade or hold up.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
More scab joinery as planking gets into final corner - I kept coming up a couple inches short and literally was scrounging trash for a longer off cut to fill the last corner pieces. (found what I needed supporting the rail on my MFT where it had lived forgotten for several days) The initial scribe cut dominoed (I hate puns, but couldn't pass this one) through rest of installation. I certainly achieving my hoped for embrace of "reclaimed look" In the end I had no wood left save a few triangular 1-3" off cuts.
[attachimg=5]
[attachimg=6]
Ended up with exactly 5 leftover deck screws. How ofter does that happen? Usually come up 5 short. Maybe Karmic payback for all my "board stretching"??
[attachimg=9]
Finished deck, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Certainly makes the other sections look bad and appears I'm now obligated to get after those next spring. This section was something of a test to see if the wood could be salvaged, the other sections are in significantly better condition so they should rework nicely.
[attachimg=7]
[attachimg=8]
Things got slightly sideways right away when laying the first (new) plank. This board butts against my newly fabricated vertical 2x10 where the old construction had it tucked under the vertical riser. Right away found the vertical framing had a roughly 1-1/4" outward bow and I ended up scribing in my first plank. Ok, whatever, get out the jigsaw and chop away. Had planned to have 1/4" gaps between planks and dry fitting the scribed board with a gap looked bad: The grain and bow combined to make it look really crooked, flush fitting the plank looked pretty good so flush it was.
The miters on this portion of deck are over 60 degrees, rendering each plank about 9" shorter than the one next to it. I quickly discovered that by scribing and flush fitting my first plank all the other planks were moved about 1-1/2" laterally and now needed to be a couple inches longer. My longest reclaimed board then came up short and the issue cascaded down the line to successive planks with some improvised Domino joinery as solution. Working with new stock this would not be an issue.
Scribed in first plank:
[attachimg=1]
I rarely use stock protractor fence on my MFT but for cuts beyond 45 degrees it's really good option to have:
[attachimg=2]
Rhut-Rhoo, two boards in a row too short. Time to get out the board stretcher (DF-500). Someone with more brains and less free time would simply butt the planks and screw them down but I opted to hit them with a couple Dominos and some TiteBond. Very limited in my choice of what pieces to use here, so got a weird grain match, but looks good enough. Will be interesting to see if these end grain joints degrade or hold up.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
More scab joinery as planking gets into final corner - I kept coming up a couple inches short and literally was scrounging trash for a longer off cut to fill the last corner pieces. (found what I needed supporting the rail on my MFT where it had lived forgotten for several days) The initial scribe cut dominoed (I hate puns, but couldn't pass this one) through rest of installation. I certainly achieving my hoped for embrace of "reclaimed look" In the end I had no wood left save a few triangular 1-3" off cuts.
[attachimg=5]
[attachimg=6]
Ended up with exactly 5 leftover deck screws. How ofter does that happen? Usually come up 5 short. Maybe Karmic payback for all my "board stretching"??
[attachimg=9]
Finished deck, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Certainly makes the other sections look bad and appears I'm now obligated to get after those next spring. This section was something of a test to see if the wood could be salvaged, the other sections are in significantly better condition so they should rework nicely.
[attachimg=7]
[attachimg=8]
Attachments
I wish our redwood deck looked that beautiful 
Fun place to visit in Occidental California. (Covid sucks!)http://www.sturgeonsmill.com/
That is easy enough in California. There is an old mill that runs as a museum, and gets old growth timber gifted to them to cut up and sell for demonstration purposes, and funding. They mill true 2inx12in, 4inx4in, or whatever you want like 12inx24inx25ft.Cheese said:
Fun place to visit in Occidental California. (Covid sucks!)http://www.sturgeonsmill.com/
Peter_C said:I wish our redwood deck looked that beautiful
That is easy enough in California. There is an old mill that runs as a museum, and gets old growth timber gifted to them to cut up and sell for demonstration purposes, and funding. They mill true 2inx12in, 4inx4in, or whatever you want like 12inx24inx25ft.Cheese said:
Fun place to visit in Occidental California. (Covid sucks!)http://www.sturgeonsmill.com/
Just watched their video - no Saw Stop technology in that place! I’ve been in that area a few times, lovely country.
Ok, just finished my every other year, pre-winter scrub and refinish on this deck and thought to share pics of how the reworked planks, plugs and butt joints fared after two years of Utah sun and snow.
The planks look pretty good, not as nice as they did 70 hours out of the planer, but still substantially better than the surrounding decades old wood.
Butt joints and glued in plugs have not degraded and overall pleased with results.
(but not enough to feel urge to take on doing the remaining, much larger sections of the deck where the framing is degraded but still intact - working at ground level is hard and it's easy to find other things I'd rather do....)
View attachment 1
Scrubbed and treated with brightener.
View attachment 2
Sanded and applied a coat of Penofin red can
View attachment 3
Close up of butt joint and hole plugs, kinda surprised no real degradation.
The planks look pretty good, not as nice as they did 70 hours out of the planer, but still substantially better than the surrounding decades old wood.
Butt joints and glued in plugs have not degraded and overall pleased with results.
(but not enough to feel urge to take on doing the remaining, much larger sections of the deck where the framing is degraded but still intact - working at ground level is hard and it's easy to find other things I'd rather do....)
View attachment 1
Scrubbed and treated with brightener.
View attachment 2
Sanded and applied a coat of Penofin red can
View attachment 3
Close up of butt joint and hole plugs, kinda surprised no real degradation.
Attachments
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