Do You Need to Pre-Drill Deck Boards? (What You Need To Know)

So you have your deck framing all taken care of and now all that’s left is to get your deck boards locked in place. All you have to do is fire up the screw gun and get to work, right?

Wrong! While you definitely want to screw deck boards down (rather than nail them), it’s important that you take the time to predrill your deck boards before you jump right in. This is the only way to avoid splitting or weakening your deck boards.

Interested in learning a little more about why it’s important to predrill your deck boards?

We cover that (and more) below.

Do You Need to Pre-Drill Deck Boards?

You could certainly get away with driving screws directly into your deck boards without taking the time to predrill.

Plenty of folks have done this in the past and the odds are pretty good that lots of folks are going to do it in the future, too.

Professionals, though, highly recommend that you take the time to predrill all of your deck boards out in advance – and not just because the finished look is cleaner (even though it is).

No, the main reason to predrill out holes for your deck boards is to prevent the board itself from splintering and cracking.

The odds are pretty good that you know exactly what we are talking about, especially if you’ve been working with wood for any amount of time.

You go to screw a board in place (especially near an edge) and then you hear that twisting, snapping, cracking and popping sound. The board splits, the screw is useless, and now you have to either replace the board altogether or find another place to drill it in – leaving this weakness behind.

Not good.

Benefit of Pre-Drilling

There are a couple of big benefits to predrilling your deck boards before you start to send screws home, including (not limited to):

You can sink the screw a little deeper, getting it beneath the surface of the board so that you don’t get caught on it when walking around barefoot
Get a cleaner finished look when you predrill
Don’t have to worry about weakening the structural integrity of your deck boards with cracks and splits, including those you wouldn’t be able to see under the surface

The Process

Predrilling is a game changer and it really doesn’t take all that long to knock out the right way.

You start with an undersized drill bit (you still want there to be plenty of “meat” for your screws to bite into) and then you punch holes through your deck boards a little bit into the deck framing underneath.

This allows you to sink your screws deeper, getting ahead of that screw underneath the surface of the board and guaranteeing that you’re not going to catch that sharp edge when walking around.

That’s huge, especially if you have pets or little children that are going to be spending a lot of time out on the deck (particularly barefoot).

On top of that, because you predrilled out the hole you’re not going to have to worry about the screw itself doing all the digging and tearing into the material as it works its way home.

Cleaner and More Efficient

The end result is a much cleaner, much more consistent, much better looking finish. There’s not going to be any tear out that needs to be sanded away or touched up.

Finally – and most importantly – the reason to predrill these holes is to avoid the splitting and cracking we talked about a moment ago.

It doesn’t take a whole lot for the relatively thin deck boards to splinter and crack, especially when you are driving big, chunky screws into them without predrilling.

Even tiny cracks can become huge problems as soon as water works its way down the screw and into the board itself. Water that finds its way trapped in those cracks can freeze up, causing the board to splinter even more than it would have.

The end result is a deck a whole lot more compromised than you’d expect, a whole lot faster than you’d expect as well.

All of this can be avoided with a quick predrill, though!

How to Pre-Drill Faster

If you really want to speed this process up, though, all you need to do is get your hands on a decent deck board predrilling jig (like the ones made by Kreg, for example) – or even make your own.

The idea here is to streamline and simplify the process of finding out where to drill those initial holes and to keep everything as consistent as possible.

Some of the commercially available predrill jigs allow you to go at an angle as well.

Instead of driving the screw down through the face of your boards (and potentially leaving those exposed screw heads we mentioned a moment ago), driving at an angle through the side of the deck board still ties the meat of the board down to the frame while hiding the screws completely.

It’s not a bad way to get a really clean finish that would have been next to impossible to pull off without this kind of jig.

These things are huge timesavers and well worth springing for.

Closing Thoughts

Do you absolutely need to predrill holes to get your deck boards attached to your frame?

Not really, we suppose.

Do you absolutely need to predrill holes to securely lock down your deck boards without tearout, without cracking the wood, and without risking the structural integrity of the boards themselves?

100%!

Thankfully, it really doesn’t take all that long to go through the predrill process. That’s with or without a jig, too.

Mark out your joists by snapping a chalk line across your boards and jump right in. You can rock and roll with nothing but a cordless drill and a quality bit – though things will go a little bit faster if you are plugged in (and even faster still if you have a second set of hands to help you out).

Take the time to predrill, though.

You won’t regret it!

Take a look at our other most recent blog posts below:

Do You Need to Pre-Drill Deck Boards? (What You Need To Know)