Attaching Decking

[srohara]

I am about to lay my decking and want to know what to use to attach it to the joists. I am using Merbau decking but it is the small 68mm boards and hardwood joists. I was going to use dome top nails but i think they will be to visible. With 2 nails across each board it will just look like a look of metal.
What else can i use that will not be so visible. I really dont want to be able to see all the nails. Any suggestions

[brynk]

gday srohara

on our deck (http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=58109) we used gal nails, hammered flush with the top of the timber - nails punched below the height of the timber create a water-trap & over the years hasten the decline of the deck's surface because the timber around the nail head decays and the boards then lift.
anyway, the act of hammering them in smashed the gal from the head (dunno if this happens on decent nails - these were zenith made-in-china specials from bluntings) and the recent rain rusted them lightly. now they almost match the yellow stringy - you can barely notice them unless you look hard :D

there have been talk on here about a system for mounting decking that you can't see from the top. can't remember what it is called but it was in the last 3 or 4 pages of posts

r's brynk

[mic-d]

gday srohara

on our deck (http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=58109) we used gal nails, hammered flush with the top of the timber - nails punched below the height of the timber create a water-trap & over the years hasten the decline of the deck's surface because the timber around the nail head decays and the boards then lift.
anyway, the act of hammering them in smashed the gal from the head (dunno if this happens on decent nails - these were zenith made-in-china specials from bluntings) and the recent rain rusted them lightly. now they almost match the yellow stringy - you can barely notice them unless you look hard :D

there have been talk on here about a system for mounting decking that you can't see from the top. can't remember what it is called but it was in the last 3 or 4 pages of posts

r's brynk

more likely what you are seeing is the tanin from the wet timber staining the nail heads, but you're right, 50mm or 65mm gal bullet heads are inconspicuous.

Cheers
Michael

[pawnhead]

See this post (http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?p=620723#post620723) for concealed fixings.

I just used thin gauge (2.15 x 50mm from memory) galv bullet head nails, punch and puttied on my deck (http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?p=435552#post435552) and you can hardly see them at all. It's merbau nailed into second hand (almost petrified) hardwood joists. I had to use a nail as a drill bit, to pre-drill a few of the harder joists. There's no way that they'll pull out, but if you were using pine joists I wouldn't be as confident.
It looked like this just after I'd laid it and polyd it over a year ago:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/holgerdanske/th_Dec31447.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/holgerdanske/Dec31447.jpg)

And it looked like this this afternoon, with sawdust over it (I'm doing some work out there at the moment). You can see the sawdust on top of the joists in the gaps of the decking, but you don't notice the puttied nails unless you're looking for them:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/holgerdanske/th_PA21.jpg (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/holgerdanske/PA21.jpg)

[rhancock]

My BIL used secret fixings on his deck and I have to say it does look smart, but he runs a multimillion dollar building company, so he has endless minions to spend hours making his house look beautiful. I don't know that I could justify the time it takes to fit them.

[srohara]

Can i use bullet head nails, can i get them in stainless steel. Still unsure on what to use

[oohsam]

Use galvinised bullet head twist nails. Predrill the ends of the boards.
If you dont want to use nails, use square head type 17 10g stainless steel screws. They are much more expensive than the nails.