Making a terrace board with your own hands

Making a terrace board with your own hands is quite possible. You just need to know exactly how to make a KDP from a regular board. Another important nuance in this case is milling cutters and machines for the production of decking.

Before you start making a decking board with your own hands, you need to find out why it is generally needed. The popularity of decking has not only not declined over the past 50 years, it has grown significantly. Such a coating is widely used on gazebos and for decorating open terraces. There, the flooring will be affected by:

• sunlight;
• rain streams;
• snow;
• dew;
• wind;
• high air humidity;
• icing;
• temperature drops.

It is customary to distinguish 3 main subtypes:

• decking itself;

• garden board;

• wood-polymer composite (it is the most popular).

WPC is obtained by mixing resin with polypropylene and wood chips.

The optimal technology always includes the use of wood flour, as an option - sawdust and shavings. After crushing wood processing waste, they must be mixed with polymer additives. These are:

• polyethylene;
• polyvinyl chloride;
• polypropylene.

Obtaining the desired color is achieved through the introduction of dyes.

The powder is usually made from softwood. Special additives make it possible to improve the operational parameters; they account for about 1/20 of the total mass of the product.

For work, you will definitely need crushing machine. It is he who allows you to turn wood waste into powder. A drying plant is also a must. Dryers are available in various capacities. You can mix polymers with wood flour in a mixer. Another important element is line converting powder into granules.

In addition to these devices, you need:

• sanding system (allows you to process the finished board and give it a typical matte look);
• cutters that cut the finished product into fragments of a given thickness and width;
• embossing systems (allowing to produce a corrugated non-slip layer);
• brushing machines or other cleaning units that age the surface of the wood, remove debris, and form a non-uniform outer layer.

It is not difficult to make a KDP from a regular board.

• First, the blanks are cut into equal pieces. A jointer and a surface gauge will help in this.
• It is impossible to increase the similarity with the original without making grooves. They can be obtained even with a semicircular base mill. The tool must have multiple blades. The role of the grooves is ambiguous. On the one hand, they reduce slip. On the other hand, moisture flows down the grooves. It is not scary if after processing with a milling cutter part of the pile remains, because later the pile will be removed.Important: the ribs must be of equal length. One ribbed furrow can be made for each pass.
• Facing can be one of the first steps, because it is best to immediately measure the required length and cut off the excess.
• Firing is very important to ensure the durability of the material. Such processing is carried out with a blowtorch or an oxygen torch. Attention: follow fire safety measures.
• The burnt board must be sanded, removing the burnt mass, or cleaned with an Osborne brush.
• The next step is to coat with a special coating. It is necessary to paint the WPC as evenly as possible. The presence of inclusions is not allowed. Simple paint is not always suitable: it will be much more valuable to use a special oil impregnation. It is optimal to use 2-3 impregnations for greater reliability.

For the intricacies of making a decking board with your own hands, see the next video.