Well I wasn't dumb enough to try to set the deck myself so I had a friend help this morning for an hour. I decided to use arjay technologies general bonding putty (potter putty)
http://www.arjaytech.com/index.php/o...-multi-purpose
I knew I had 30 minutes work time with it, which sounds like plenty of time until something goes wrong.
fortunately everything went smooth. We mixed 8 ml mekp to a quart of putty. we mixed about 2.5 gallons of putty in a empty 5 gallon bucket and used a spackel mixer, we ended up using about 2.3 gallons of putty.
I decided to try the mason grout bags and they worked great , we cut the hole to a 1" diameter to squirt the stringers. we used 3 bags, I zip tied the bags shut after filling so you could really squeeze the crap out of them.
I also rounded up 14 5gallon buckets and filled them up the night before
I also did a test sample the night before and cures just like the stuff that was made 40 years ago!!!
the deck went down without any problems, it was good to have an extra set of hands there to put it in place.