Shaun,,, I went out into the kitchen and measured a couple of cutting
boards. They were like 1/2" thick! Next visit to Wally Mart I will bring
my ruler. Who knows, maybe find a cutting board around 1/4" think. That
might work.

I looked in a few different DIY books and the mostly often recommendation is
Marine Ply . Measure the Ply, cut , Casey calls for a beveled edge to the
ply.

Then, before putting up under .. epoxy the ply to seal all the edges, and
bolt holes.

One other book showed a thin piece of stainless steel under the stanchion
base. Helps to spread out the forces of load. The base piece of stainless
is sealed with polysulfide ( 4200?? ), then the stanchion base is sealed as
it is put down on the base piece of stainless.

Under ,, marine ply.

I should think this would give a very strong stanchion base.


One other question ;; what thicknesses does stainless steel come in?

I've never bought any.

-----------------------
"Shaun Van Poecke" wrote in message
...
Planning for spring. I will rebed my stanchion bases. Under the deck,
the backing is a thin piece of fiberglass. I would like to give the
bases a bit more support. I came across the material Starboard.

For myself, I would have gone with marine ply, but the idea of using a
plastic cutting board is simple, cheap and brilliant. I can definitely
see myself using it in future!

If you decide to go with stainless, get it cut for you (try to find a shop
with a guillotine, thats the quickest way to cut it and they probably wont
charge). You'll need a good supply of quality drill bits; think cobalt,
not the $20 for 100 bits kit.

If you go with aluminum, it neednt be one of the 5000 grade varieties....
while this is what we use at work for building boats, i wouldnt class the
underside of a deck as being a marine environment. You could get away
with pretty much any old garden variety of aluminum here. You can cut it
with any tool that you would use for wood working that has a carbide tip
blade (sawzall, circular saw, table saw etc) it even hacksaws pretty easy.
drilling is a breeze.

regardless of what you choose, re-bed the stanchion above deck with a
quality bedding compound (3M is pretty good) not with liquid nails, epoxy
or whatever else you have in your tool box. *Do not* use bedding compound
under the deck! If you have water getting through from the top of the
deck, you want to know about it. If you seal the bottom as well, the
water has nowhere to travel except internally along your fibreglass or ply
deck. by the time you find out about it you will be in big trouble. For
the same reason, I would not fibreglass the underside of the deck.

Shaun