Deck Project

[Thom2]

Friend of mine needed her deck moved when she moved her camper to a new seasonal site. The deck was originally constructed as one piece and whoever moved it before me had pretty much butchered it. As much as I wanted to start from scratch, the main materials were there and would save her a lot of money by attempting to salvage what I could. The railings were shot tho' and I came up with a 'fairly' cheap idea that I thought would look really good.

These are in-progress pics but it's coming along very nicely and she's thrilled with the overall appearance.

[Black wallnut]

Looking good Thom.

[cabinetman]

The railings look very good. The piers are very interesting.

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[JimD]

Looking pretty good. Are the spindles electrical conduit? If so, I did the same thing. I spray painted mine first but it is now coming off after about 10 years.

Jim

[Thom2]

Building this in the shop would have been cake walk .... bulding this on-site proved to be a little challenging tho'. The balusters are 1/2" galvanized electrical conduit. $29/pack10 pre-made black anodized aluminum vs. $1.85/10' section for conduit. My HF 14" metal chop saw made short work of getting 3 sections from every 10' length bringing the per piece down to $0.62/each. We calculated that we needed 159 balusters for the deck and stair railings, so the price savings was $464 vs. $98.58.

I then purchased a craftsman angle drill guide to act as a portable drill press for drilling the railings. WELL, it only had a 3/8" chuck and would only accept my 3/4" forstner bit which wasn't the speediest process (to say the LEAST) on wet garbage construction lumber. I finally used the drill guide to make a sliding 2x4 jig to guide my 3/4" twist drill bit and used the old tape flag method as my depth stop.

This project definitely proved to me that having a shop full of tools is certainly NICE, but you still need to know the 'old school' ways of doing things when in a pinch. I just can't wait to get to the next interesting part which will be the gates where I'll be using mortise and tenon joinery for strength.