It is just amazing to me how small things can have larger impacts. This awning that we put up, not that it is or was a small job or cost, has actually motivated Deb and me to start working on more projects. This week we wanted to make more progress on the decks so ripped up the rest of the teak on the starboard side up to the coach house roof. I thought it was worth showing closeup and detail of how we remove the teak as well as how we eliminate the screws that are left after the boards are pulled up.
And boy howdy are there a lot of them to remove. I am estimating when this job is done I will have removed some 7000 screws or so.
When we remove the decking, we start this with 2 crowbars. The first one we use is a flat bar that is about 14 inches long and can be used either at a shallow or sharp angle. I start with this one and use the shallow angle direction to pound the flat bar under the teak planks between 2 screws. I do this to avoid hitting the screws themselves. 2 main reasons for this, the first is simply that the bar doesn’t usually go through the screw making the work harder and also because I don’t want to hit the screw and cause it to widen the hole through the deck at its entry point.
Once I have the bar hammered under the boards at almost the full length of the bar, By using a larger bar that is about 20 inches or so and moving as far away from the flat bar as I can while still being able to get the thicker crowbar under the teak, I do so. I then hammer this almost all the way under the teak and repeat this process moving along a length of teak planks alternating which bar I put in at each point. What is happening as we do this is the boards are being pulled upward and is pulling the screw heads right down through the teak leaving us with the boards removed and all or most of the screws still intact on the deck below it.
I always attempt to do rows of boards that are about 6 feet long where possible and about 4-6 planks wide. This allows the most leverage on the loosened piece and seems to increase the chance that I can pull it up in one piece. This method had changed a little bit as we moved forward with the deck work and has really allowed us to do this much faster than when we first started, and I was actually removing bungs where they existed, trying to remove screws and then lifting up the boards. (See earlier blog posts for this successful but slow attempt) http://www.svdreamchaser.com/2015/02/teak-deck-renewal-exploratory-visit-to.html
After pulling up all teak we are left with some crazy amount of screws. I found what works best here is to use a screw gun for the few that you will be able to remove this way. My guidance, for what it is worth, is to not even bother trying with flat head bronze screws. The bits slip off the heads and most break right away. On philips head screws, most have epoxy or glue in the heads and a bit won’t stay in them so I get about 5-10% remove this way with the screw gun only.
I then use 2 vise grips for my job. I do this because I have 2 primary sizes and types of screws on the deck. The original flat head bronze screws and Phillips stainless heads that someone attempted to repair the deck with in the past. I have each tool adjusted to the size of the head and I hold them vise grips vertical over the head and clamp it to the screw head itself. I then twist out the heads.
For some reason I save them all in cups and will ultimately throw them all away, but I don’t want them falling overboard or getting stepped on.
If you want to see the video from this week showing this in some more detail, check it out below. Also feel free to subscribe to our channel on youtube and or follow us on Facebook where we will do facebook live videos at times as well. You can click the following link for our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SVDreamChaser/
We put together a video of the work this week as usual. We hope you enjoy it, share it and do me a favor and let me know if you think others would benefit from it as well.
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