Help With Vinyl Deck Seams in Crestliner

[runninfarmer]

Hi all, I'm rebuilding the floor in an 18' Crestliner Nordic I recently picked up and I'm going with the Nautolex vinyl for the floor covering. I'm vinyling individual pieces and then riveting the pieces down. I originally intended to leave the seams uncovered, but I have a couple gaps in the seam. Should I leave seams as-is, or use aluminum flat stock to cover the seam? If so what size? Alternatively, would it better to get aluminum angles and cover the seam that way by making an aluminum seam? Thanks for the help! Here's a pic of the current progress:

 

[kmarine]

I would forget the rivets and hold down the pieces with stainless or aluminium strios with a bead of urethane adhesive like 3m 4200 to keep water out.

 

[Watermann]

Yeah you want to use large flange blind rivets to hold the decking in place, gluing down anything to aluminum is going to be less than effective in the long run it will come loose.

I put decking in 2 boats, one was seamed like yours and the other was one run. I didn't cover the seams but if they bother you enough to add something then maybe somethinglike another forum member used on his boat, it's a T shaped aluminum that fits between the decking. oldhaven can tell you how to find it.

 

[fishrdan]

I wouldn't worry about the gaps, since the wood will expand a bit with varying humidity. Most I see is a 1/8" gap, nothing to worry about.

One issue I see is the center deck panel doesn't reach the starboard/right stringer, so it doesn't have anything to attach to on the edge. Adding a piece of aluminum angle to the stringer will give the panel something to attach to.

Screws or rivets, doesn't matter. Though, screws will be easier to remove if a panel needs to come out in the future.

 

[runninfarmer]

Sounds good, I ordered both small and large flange rivets to be safe. I like the looks of the smaller ones more, but the larger ones will definitely give me more holding power. Normally I'd leave the seams, but I have one spot where the saw got away from me, :facepalm:. I'll see if I can get some hands on some aluminum T. I saw in Jigngrub's tracker post, that he used 1/2" x 1/16" angle for his seams. May try that as well if I don't find the T.

I was thinking the same thing fishrdan. Crestliner actually made the original too small, with the original screws angled in. Wish I was thinking and made it bigger to correct for it. I'll use some angle to give it something to anchor to.

 

[fishrdan]

How much of a gap is there and how bad is it? I wouldn't be opposed to gluing on a thin (wedge shaped?) strip to correct the gap, you would have to pull back the vinyl a bit to glue the strip on, but I think it would be better than using the T aluminum.