Build a T-Handle Pry Stick and Strip Deck Boards Standing Up

The Problem

Stripping old deck boards with a flat bar is a knee-and-back job — pry an inch, shuffle forward, pry an inch, for two hundred square feet. The bar has plenty of power but no reach, so you spend the day folded over the fasteners.

The Technique

This framer builds the leverage out of demo scrap:

1. Take a straight 2x4 about six feet long.
2. Screw a two-foot piece of 2x4 across it near one end, flat side to flat side, making a T.
3. Slide the crosspiece under the edge of a deck board — the T-head spans two joist bays, so it catches the board at two points.
4. Pull down on the long handle. The crosspiece fulcrums on the joists and peels the board up, nails and all, while you stand upright.
5. Walk the tool down the board, popping it free section by section.

Old demo hands know this as a Wilson stick — commenters report forty years of service on deck and floor tear-outs. The build cost is three screws and two offcuts from the pile you're about to throw away.