The one who told me to stop over-tightening bolts on the deck frame...

So I had this guy on the job site last month, Randy, he's been framing for 30 years. He sees me cranking down on these carriage bolts for a deck we were building outside of Portland... he says 'you're gonna strip them and split the wood if you keep that up'. I kinda laughed it off cause I thought tight is tight, right? Well, three days later after a rain storm, two of the bolts had loosened up and the ledger board was starting to shift. Turns out he was right about backing off a quarter turn after snug. I had to pull three joists to fix it and lost half a day. Has anyone else wrecked a project by ignoring some old school advice?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva90818d ago

Man, hearing you say you "lost half a day" pulling three joists just to fix that... that's rough. I've been there, ignoring that one piece of advice from an old timer and paying for it later. I remember one time on a deck job I was helping my buddy with, some guy told me not to over-crank the lag screws into the rim joist because the wood would crack. I thought I knew better, got all aggressive with the impact driver, and sure enough, two of them split the wood clean in half. Had to tear out a whole section of the railing and redo it. That old school advice about backing off a quarter turn is the real deal, it lets the wood settle without crushing itself. It's wild how such a small thing can mess up your whole schedule and budget like that.

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the_piper17d ago

Yeah that backing off a quarter turn thing is gold. @eva908, a buddy of mine learned the hard way too, cranked deck screws so tight the boards cupped overnight and he had to pull up half the deck the next day.