John Ziebron
08-29-2017, 7:26 PM
I finally decided to do a makeover on the 11 year old deck that came with my house. And I went with composite decking. I had no issues with the deck itself other than leveling out the existing joists. Just had to trim an inch or so off the one side after all the boards were secured in place.
I decided to remake the steps, going from 4 to 5 steps and having a longer run on each. I had to cut 12 foot deck boards into 3 pieces for each step. No problem using my miter saw in the shop. But since I give my wood dust/shavings to a local neighbor with horses I didn't want to mix this composite material in. So I disconnected from the DC and, with an adapter, hooked up to one of my shop vacs. Got most of it that way and had a little vacuuming to do afterwards.
Out of the 3 boards for each step one had to get narrowed down a bit. No problem - I'll just use my table saw and not turn on the DC. Yes, I knew it would be a little messy. We've all done a quick rip on a board and forgot or didn't turn on our DC. But let me tell you, these composite cuttings (not really dust) seem to fly around much worse than ordinary wood dust. In retrospect, if I had a real track saw instead of just a circular saw I would have tried that route doing it outside. Just not sure how well that would have worked on boards that are only 5 1/2 inches wide and you need to cut off 1 1/2 inches.
So if you're planning on cutting any composite material like this be aware that it's going to be more of a mess to clean up unless you don't care about getting it mixed in with your DC swarf.
I decided to remake the steps, going from 4 to 5 steps and having a longer run on each. I had to cut 12 foot deck boards into 3 pieces for each step. No problem using my miter saw in the shop. But since I give my wood dust/shavings to a local neighbor with horses I didn't want to mix this composite material in. So I disconnected from the DC and, with an adapter, hooked up to one of my shop vacs. Got most of it that way and had a little vacuuming to do afterwards.
Out of the 3 boards for each step one had to get narrowed down a bit. No problem - I'll just use my table saw and not turn on the DC. Yes, I knew it would be a little messy. We've all done a quick rip on a board and forgot or didn't turn on our DC. But let me tell you, these composite cuttings (not really dust) seem to fly around much worse than ordinary wood dust. In retrospect, if I had a real track saw instead of just a circular saw I would have tried that route doing it outside. Just not sure how well that would have worked on boards that are only 5 1/2 inches wide and you need to cut off 1 1/2 inches.
So if you're planning on cutting any composite material like this be aware that it's going to be more of a mess to clean up unless you don't care about getting it mixed in with your DC swarf.