Finishing the Oneida's Deck

Finishing the Oneida's Deck

The pieces making up the deck were not set exactly level. The differences are very slight as you can see compared to the dime sitting on the deck. Some hanging knees were a little above the deck beams.

Here again we see a slight difference in the carlings when they were cut to fit the notches in the deck. The difference is less than half the thickness of a dime.

The worst is a knee sticking up the thickness of a dime. The average is about the thickness of the rim on a dime as you can see the carlings and ledges to the right of the dime.

I used a home made sanding disk on my Dremel. The disks are one inch diameter plastic with 100 grit sandpaper glued to them. For backing I use the rubber drum sander from Dremel. If you find it difficult to cut a perfect disk with a center hole, do what I do and contact Double O Laser and order a dozen or so. These disk sanders will cut fast so be careful not to sand right through the ledges, or sand dips in the beams. A very light touch is all you need to level out the deck.

Here is a sample of a before and after sanding. I don’t worry about getting epoxy on the surface of the deck. Epoxy sands very nice and cleans right off. The slight difference in wood color shows off the different parts of the deck. At this point you can leave the deck wide open to show off the work, or put on just a few deck planks.