Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I am starting over with new 2X4's and plan to wrap the entire board with carpet. I looked at a couple of websites and youtube videos. Everyone seams to just nail or staple the carpet. I was thinking gluing (in addition to stapling with stainless steel staples) might help to keep the carpet from moving which should limit stretching of the carpet, thus prolonging the life of the material. Does this make sense? What do you all do. BTW, sorry if this question belongs in the rebuild forum.

'bob

No need to glue it down the carpet will last as long as the 2x4 will then just get new carpet and stainless steel staples quick and ez.

I'll temporarily staple my carpet to the bunks, then nail a bunch of 1 1/4" galvanized roofing nails through the carpet. They do a good job.

I had just replaced my carpet on the pontoon and had some glue on hand, so i put a little glue on the 2x6's that I used for bunk boards.

It probably isn't necessary but I have always used carpet glue on mine when replacing the carpet on my trailer bunks.

On the trailer bunks I have replaced, that had carpet, I just used stainless staples and an electric stapler. On my current trailer I used carpeted bunks on the rear and Loadrite plastic bunk covers on the front ones. It works slick as shit.

I have always just stapled mine. If you to replace the carpet again, after gluing, its a PIA to rip it off. ROBBSRACINGENGINES Do those Loadrites really help you out? Been thinking about those for a while...

Bryden24shp wrote:I have always just stapled mine. If you to replace the carpet again, after gluing, its a PIA to rip it off. ROBBSRACINGENGINES Do those Loadrites really help you out? Been thinking about those for a while...

Yeah they really do work well. When your backing down the ramp you have the carpeted rear bunks to hold the toon on the trailer. Once the rear bunks are submerged and the toon floats up off them its slides rite off the front Loadrites nicely. Same when loading. I back in the water until the rear bunks are completely submerged and the fronts are under water just a bit. Drive it rite on. It slides rite up the front bunks nice. Theres pics on here in another thread.

Thanks for all the replies. I went ahead and built the bunks last night. I decided to just staple based on the input here. I did use approximately 150 staples per rail so hopefully the carpet will not pull off anytime soon. I will recommend anyone doing a job like this to spend 20 bucks at harbor freight on a pneumatic stapler if you don't have one. It buries 9/16 long staples deep into the 2X4 quickly with no effort. After 8 rails and 1200 staples I would hate to think what my hands would look like if I used a manual stapler.

'bob

Just a point of clarification. You are exactly right that if you are replacing carpet that gluing will make it a pain to remove. I should have pointed out that I have always replaced the wood when I replace the carpet. On my previous boats, the wooden bunks were shot about the same time the carpet needed replacing so I always replaced both at the same time.

If I thought that I would need to replace my carpet only, I agree that stapling is the way to go.