Stainless Steel screws. Or use the color coated deck screws. more expensive. But won't rust/weather. You could always remove all of the boards, flip them over, and reattach. Ipe will naturally weather and turn gray unless you use a protective UV Spar Varnish. You might be able to sand and refinish these to bring them back to the reddish tone.

HI Beth, Thanks for the idea! I have a 15 year-old ipe deck that had only intermittent upkeep. The boards were grey and had surface cracks. Sanding them was a painfully slow process and did not remove the cracks completely. When i decided the non-ipe railings and posts need to be replaced, i took a couple of the boards out around the post and flipped them over. The underside of the ipe boards looked like new except for some timber oil deposits that had dripped down the board sides during previous oiling.(I'm sure the stain stripper will remove them) While the 5/4 x 6" boards had biscuit slots cut in them at the joist areas for a plastic hidden fastener clips from back in the day, I determined that i could not reuse the clips. The biscuit cut was done about 2/3 of the way down the board to accommodate the standoffs of the plastic clip. I decided that I didn't want to buy a biscuit cutter to redo the whole thing (lazy) and bought a Camo Marksman Pro to drive with their standard non-stainless 2 3/8" fasteners. I read that if you were using stainless screws it was recommended to pre-drill the holes.... and the standard fasteners seemed stronger than the stainless. I didn't think i would need the stainless and wanted to get this done (lazy again). For a novice doing this by myself the Camo system seems to be a very sturdy solution. It gaps well and using a board bender at the same time made the deck gaps straighter than they were when it was new. I was also able to remove all the ugly gaps between the ends of boards which my wife hated. I'm in the middle of the project and it's going well. I will post some pics to show the previous situation and the outcome when completed. These posts help very much when you just are not sure what the right... and more economica...l thing to do is. More later.

Agree with removing the nails from the board and replacing with a stainless #8x2.5” trim head. You do not need new deck boards. You could use Camo fasteners or use a biscuit joiner and a hidden fastener system like the Eb-ty Precision Clío for Ipe, but you’d still be left with screw jokes on the face.

If the nails have snapped you should flip the deck boards over. Pulling the trim nails out of Ipe will not be an easy task. Hopefully on the backside of the boards there is a little bit of the trim nail exposed. Get a pair of Vise-Grip pliers and lock onto the trim nail on the back of the board. Then rock the pliers backwards on the jaw acting as a lever. If you can get all the trim nails removed pre-drill the same holes with a 1/8 high speed steel bit and use 305 stainless trim screws, 316 stainless if you are near saltwater. Let us know if you can't get those trim nails out we have some other suggestions that could work.

Thread from 2017