Deck Fastening

[Brent]

Anyone care to suggest a technique to make sure the stainless screws holding the decks on my CS20 dont show through after the deck is epoxy coated, primed and painted?

The decks are epoxied in place and secured with countersunk stainless steel screws on 6 inch centers. I was thinking of removing the screws now that the epoxy at the deck to hull seam is cured. Any pros and cons?

[Joe]

In my humble opinion, there is no reason not to remove the screws and use them another day. If you have a good epoxy joint, the boat will rip apart on each side of the joint before the joint fails.

[Guest Anonymous]

I try to avoid using fasteners where there is low stress and a large gluing surface area like decks. Over a period of time, no matter how well you fill and fair or even glass over the screws you will see them print through. This can be caused by the different thermal expansion coefficient of wood and metal and even well epoxy coated wood will pass some water vapor causing some swelling of the ply.

There is one exception on decks; I try to flatten the camber with a plane in the forward 6" - 8" so that the ply does not have to bend too much in the very narrow width at the bow. I have seen the deck in this area peel up splitting the veneer instead of the epoxy failing, months after the boat was built. It is a good idea to leave the screws in the forward deck area if you had to use much force to pull the deck down tight.

You could cover the screws like Bill Heil (see his fotos in an earlier post)did by putting on a small toe rail around the deck edge and a fancy king plank to hide the center seam and fasteners.

Graham

[Brent]

The screws were in jeopardy already, and these comments from my esteem peers have sealed their fate. They are coming out!

I knew there would be some movement due to thermal expansion, but I had not considered the moisture migration issue. All the more reason!

I will leave a few up front as Graham suggests, and maybe a couple near other high stress points, like the mast tube positions.

[Pat Kelly]

On my CS 20 I didn't use any fasteners on the deck as I wanted to finish it bright and didn't want to see them. I eased the camber forward as Graham suggested and weighted down the deck with an odd assortment of containers filled with water. It has worked out fine, I think I got a good bond and it looks good also. It was nice, though, to hear that Graham advocated a fastener-less deck.

Pat Kelly