We just finished re-decking one of our stages. It had
masonite previously and that buckled pretty bad. My boss called around to some other venues, and I guess the
masonite was a pretty standard thing. I guess the main reason is that if a sheet get to badly warped or damaged it's easy to replace. The end result was that we ended up going with new
masonite.
We got the
Masonite locally, and let it sit in the
venue for a couple days to acclimate. (the
venue is rather humid) We laid it down in full sheets and left the
thickness of a quarter between sheets. The
masonite was attached to the subfloor with staples. We came in the next day and discovered that a quarters
thickness wasn't enough, all the sheets had expanded, and closed up the all the gaps. A couple sheets had even buckled. A campus carpenter came in and cut a sawblade's width cut between the sheets to open up the gap again and things have been good so far. We probably should have left a bigger gap to begin with, say 1/4 inch, it would have saved coming back and cutting the stuff later.
Anyway, after everything got laid down, we
gaff taped over the seems, then put down an oil based primer and then 3 coats of
flat black latex paint. It's been OK since.
One word of advice we got in calling around was that if a sheet buckles or bubbles or gets damaged it should be replaced not just re-attached. That's at least partly why people like it. It's cheap.
Matt