I’m almost finished installing a 400 sq. ft. ipe deck. As mentioned by many others, it has been a LOT of work (I top screwed with stardrive trim head SS screws). Per instructions that came with the ipe (Ironwood brand), I applied Anchorseal to the end grain after every cut. My question is what to do about all of the wax that was absorbed into the wood face near end cuts? I want to apply Messmers UV Plus to the deck, but it seems to me that it won’t be absorbed anywhere that the wax has penetrated and I’ll end up with greying areas on all of the joints due to lack of UV protection. A lot of folks on this forum have built ipe decks – how did you handle the wax with your finish?
-Hozer
Replies
Did you ever figure out an answer to your question? I'm doing the exact same thing on a deck right now (trying to finish before the snow flies!).
My thought is to cut the already sealed end of each piece to expose a fresh end, reseal but doing so carefully so that wax does end up on the face, and screw down.
No one ever responded so I just put Anchorseal on the ends without being too careful and figured I'd clean it up later. Once the deck was complete, I scraped the excess off with a scraper blade and then cleaned it with Acetone. This worked pretty well but not perfectly. I finished the deck with Messmers and it didn't quite absorb as well in some spots as others. It wasn't terribly obvious, but you could tell if you looked closely. After the deck had been out in the weather for a few months you had to look really hard to see any differnce. Earlier this spring I retreated the deck with Messmers and there was no evidence of left over Anchorseal. The Messmers was evenly absorbed across the deck.
I think your plan to be careful to put it on the ends and not the face is a good approach, but I wouldn't stress out too much if you get a little on the face. When I was doing my ipe deck I didn't think I was ever going to be done, so I didn't want to add additional time by being so careful about the application of the Anchorseal.
-Danny
Thanks for the reply Hozer (are you Canadian?).
I think I like your approach. I can live with less than perfect results for a year or so until the wax wears off a bit. Seems silly to put a fresh cross cut into every single board when I already have 750+ countersinks, screws and plugs to install! Ugh.
E
I'm not Canadian, but I do live not far from Canada (Seattle area). Good luck with your ipe deck. Mine was a lot of work but it's been worth it - I'm very happy with the deck that I ended up with.
-Hozer