I am planning on putting on a front porch this Spring. I am going to use Mangaris 3/4 x 4″ tongue and grove decking. (Mangaris is similar to IPE). I am planning on using a Porta-Nailer on the flooring with the stainless nails. Has anyone tried this? I don’t know how the tongue will hold up with the nail. The wood is dense and I am afraid of cracking the tongue without drilling a pilot hole. I’ll probably end up drilling and screwing the tongue at the end of each board.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Michael
Replies
Michael,
I'm afraid I have bad news for you. I installed 340 sq. ft. tongue & groove 3/4 X 3 Massaranduba (aka Brazilian Redwood) on my porch this fall. Massaranduba is just a hard as IPE. We tried Porta-Nailer and it just cracked the tongue. Hand nailing was out since it would have required predrilling anyway and then setting each nail below the groove. We finally settled on pre-drilling, counterboring and then using SS GRK Phoenix trim head screws. The good news is they worked great, the porch floor turned out beautiful and I'm fairly convinced it will be the last thing standing 100 years from now. The bad news is, it took about 2 weeks to install what I thought would be a good 3 or 4 day job. I used over 1500 SS screws which means we drilled, counterbored, and installed a screw over 4500 times. We used four or five cordless drills and went through about a dozen drill bits and about 2 dozen # 10 torx head bits. The GRK heads are about the smallest you will find and we drilled with a 1/8 in titanium drill bit then counter drilled about 3/16 deep with a 3/16 drill bit. If you can find square head screws that are small enough, they would probably be a little easier on the drive bits, but the torx heads were slightly smaller and fit into the groove nicely, however if you stopped a little short and tried to restart to set the head a little deeper, you can easily break the bit. If you decide to use the GRK fasteners, do your self a favor and get the GRK bits, they last about 10 times longer than any others you will find.