Five Ways To Cinch Deck Boards || Dr Decks

hey guys dr. Dex here today I want to talk to you about five different ways to cinch deck boards together when you're laying a deck and some of them are leverage tools and a couple other are just old techniques that I've had over the years so if you like what you see today you're learn a little bit please click that subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you want to be notified every time we're putting on first content and if you want to learn how to bend deck boards don't forget to go visit dr. decks masterclass learn how to bend decking alright so the first one tool that I have for you it compresses and it can spread as well depending on what you need it to do it's an urban quick grip alright and these are clamps you can buy at Lowe's hardware store and various other online locations the thing that makes them unique is that they have an adapter kit I think it's called a deck adapter kit or a deck kit or something like that now these are the urban heavy-duty clamps I don't like they're their lesser version the less expensive versions I don't deal with that so I actually had to make an edit to these clamps to get these to fit I just took a grinder and I did grind out a little bit right here where this clamp was gonna slide on it just was these wouldn't fit so after I did that they slid right on and I've been using them for about two years now like this and how it works is you figure out whatever boards you need to cinch and you put the the two parts the two tabs on the outsides of the deck boards you want to cinch then you just pull on the clamp and then it's nice and snug and we use a lot of spacers alright so whatever space or you decide to use you can put those in and then this cinches the board's tight and I can do up to five deck boards at the same time so that's a really cool feature that's what we like to do right now also while using these clamps if I need to give myself a little push or a little pull I can remove this and add shims and either give it a fatter fit or a thinner fit just depending on what we need so that's one way to clamp up deck boards and that's probably our most commonly used one that's the one we use the most this is our second most used one and before I had these Irwin clamps this is made by Stanley I don't remember the exact term but it's a cinching tool and it only pulls in it doesn't spread like the other clamp will but what you do now we have a waterproof ladder on this deck so this won't fit quite as well over this joist as it would if it was just a joist without any bladder or tape on or anything like that and what you do is you create attention against the board here with this and then this part cinches against the joist and then when you push down on the lever it actually grabs here and then pushes the board in and it does the same thing it keeps everything locked together nice and tight usually once you get a fastener in the end then it's it's just tight and then you're good to go I think you can get those on Amazon another pretty cool tool this one's called a hardwood wrench and it basically has a couple different pins and you can take these pins off and put them in a wider hole so if you want to cinch over a piece of four by instead of a piece of two by you can do that as well and that's why I have this one because it'll fit over certain types of framing that maybe this one won't all right so the hardwood wrench same same concept goes over your joist or your beam and then it has a kind of a cam action lever here so when you do cinch this tight and I'm not gonna do it super dikes I don't want to ruin my bladder but you can cinch it tight and then it stays so that one locks into place so you don't have to sit there and hold it while you're working on cinching your deck boards so it's kind of a neat tool we don't use them quite as often but they do come in handy especially when you're trying to do something where you are by yourself like I am today or just simply need a third hand they work really good for that so the fourth tool I had was called a bow wrench but somebody took it out of our trailer and it's no longer in my stock and it's probably at my shop instead of where it should be in the trailer so so I have two more techniques for you I call this number four it's a good old hammer and chisel method and again not gonna demonstrate this I think you get the idea if you don't deal me and I'll explain again so basically if you didn't have a bladder you put your chisel in right here right against the deck board right against a joist and then you pound on the chisel to get it to go into the joist so yes you're actually are denting or compromising the corner of the joist and then you pull back on the chisel and it'll give you a proper cinch that you need to straighten out your deck boards it's a little more abusive of course it's old-school I did this when I was 20 years old back in the day until I had all these fancy tools and then problems did a bird just drop something on the huh alright so the last technique I have for you is something that you would always have on you no matter what and that's the foot method so what you do is you take your foot you go like this and then hopefully it's tight enough and then hopefully the boards are right and then you put your screws in it doesn't work very well and I don't recommend it but I've seen a million people do it and guess what I've done it as well sometimes you got to do what you got to do if you don't have the right tool you use your foot okay alright guys so that's all I got for you today thanks for watching I really appreciate it if you like what you saw don't forget to click that subscribe button hit the bell icon if you want to be notified every time we're putting out fresh content and really if you want to learn how to bend decking go visit doctor decks master class sign up and learn to become a master heat bender like me thank you very much have a great day [Music]

Channel: drdecks

Views: 17,589

Rating: 4.9021406 out of 5

Keywords: Dr decks, drdecks, deck building, custom decks, pacific northwest, carpentry, decks, deck, deck board bending, irwin clamps, cinch deck boards, lists, 5 things

Id: iarRwUvTGkw

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020