Cheap wide board decking clamps
Hi all,
Apologies to everyone if this has already been detailed a dozen times in previous threads...
just thought I would offer a solution that I recently used to straighten boards when laying our back deck and walkway - 136x19mm Spotted Gum. For those of you that have never laid wide board decking it can be extremely challenging to get dead straight and for those of you who are anal about getting it dead straight (like me) read on.... Recently, I laid a similar deck for my mother in law and although the result was good I was unhappy about some of the inconsistencies in the spacings and decided I would rectify this before I did my own. So doing some research I found a few alternatives available via retail suppliers for straightening bowed boards - The Lightning Clamp, The Board Boss™ Deck Clamp(available in the US so postage was a cost issue) and the BoWrench (pricey in my opinion) - that all seemed to do what I wanted but all had the major drawback of cost effectiveness given their limited uses outside their primary intention.
However, I managed stumble on to a chap in the US who had adapted a set of pipe clamps to do just what I wanted. I'll attach a few pics as they speak for themselves in terms of how to use them etc, but for what it's worth, I loved them and am amazed at how perfectly straight and consistent I was able to get my boards. And better still the clamps were $30 (2 pairs) the pipe was $23 (including the threaded end) and the L brackets were about $2 each. So all in all I got two sets for clamps for about $60. Compared to $150 for 1 BoWrench I thought this was very reasonable. (Photos are just of one clamp). Oh, and the 90x45 pine for L brackets was just scrap I had lying around.
Hope this helps someone because this forum has been a huge help to me and I was really looking forward to being able to give something back.
Beers
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