Redecking without screws?

Lowboy Flooring Deck Clip 50491025 TAL38DC | ILoca Services, Inc.

 

I like those deck clips. I had to special order thick fender washers for about the same price.

 

I fabricated a 16-foot trailer and when it came time to put the deck down on it I wanted to do it without going out of my mind putting screws everywhere.

So what I did was I got a quarter inch flat and went across the trailer with that. I cut pieces of round and welded them on both sides of the trailer so that I could Bolt the flat down.

I took the flat and I cut the heads off of bolts and welded them to the flat and drill the holes accordingly Through the Wood. On the beam beneath I welded pieces of round in so that the stud would go through the wood and through the round and I could bolt them in that way.

If I need to take the wood off of that trailer it would take me about 10 minutes or so.

I don't see why you could not do something similar to that on a larger trailer.

 

The product description says they are used with 3/8" carriage bolts and nuts. Is that how you did it? Drill from the bottom up? How are they holding up?

 

Yeah we used carriage bolts, I laid the boards in place as I cut them to fit then went under with a marker and marked the crossmembers. Then I took the boards and flipped them over and measured the requisite distance from the line and drilled them. They seem to be holding up good. The nice thing is if you need to replace the deck I just plunge cut between the cross members with a circlular saw then beat the boards off the cross member and cut the bolts with a grinder if that makes sense.

 

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Makes me wonder why the heck I've never heard of them before! I've done my share of decks, drilling holes for screws. Usually don't break off too many screws going in, but it happens enough to be frustrating. And then with the "clamps", you never have to worry about drilling into an existing hole, and kicking the drill sideways, breaking a bit, or making extra holes in the wood.

 

I had ran across them in some hardware catalog I was flipping through once or saw them used or something. One of those things you keep in the back of your mind then when you need them you can’t remember where you seen them, that’s the beautiful thing about google.

 

The front has a regular bulkhead to stop the wood from moving forward and has a quarter inch strap over it.

The backend I used angle with pieces of round cut to hold the boards down.

If you zoom in on the picture in the garage you can see that I used pieces of round and a bolt to pull it tight left to right.

In three spots across I welded a stud to the quarter inch flat and and put it through a piece of round welded to the crossmember.