How I fixed stringers sitting proud after the connectors went on

Same headache on the back porch stairs I rebuilt two summers ago. I set my stringers on a ledger first, then tried to add the top hangers and the wood would not pull up tight no matter how I torqued the screws. Ended up loosening everything, seating the stringer against the rim with a dead blow, and only then driving the hanger nails. Once I did it in that order it went together fine on the first try. My mistake the first time was treating the hanger like a clamp instead of something that just holds the joint after it is already seated.

I also found the cheap galvanized hanger nails from the big box store bent over before they even bottomed out, so I bought the proper short ones made for joist hangers and they went in clean.

One thing I did differently, I screwed a short 2x4 cleat under the stringer ends against the rim as backup. Probably overkill but it lets the stringer bear weight even if a nail loosens up over the years. Stairs get hammered way harder than a deck frame ever does, kids running up and down, furniture, everything.

One thing I ran into on my own set was a stringer that whould not pull flush no matter what, and it turned out the saw cut on the top of the stringer was off a degree or two, so the hanger tab sat proud on one face. If you shim behind it to close the gap you end up with angled bearing, which is worse than a small even gap in my oppinion, so I cut a fresh top off a spare and it seated right away. Now I check the top cuts against each other with the two stringers face to face before anything goes near the rim, takes ten seconds and saves an afternoon of fussing.

Ran into the same binding tab thing on a set I hung off a ledger two years back. What finally got me flush was stopping the screw-driving and grabbing a pair of bar clamps, one on each stringer, pulling them up hard against the rim before I touched the hangers. With the wood held under load the tabs had no choice but to sit flat and the nails went in clean. Ever since then I set the clamps first and treat the hardware as backup, not the puller. Been solid thru three winters with no creak at the top step.

On the stairs my old man built in the 70s there weren't any hangers at all. You notched the top of the stringer so it sat down over the rim and face-nailed the whole thing with 16ds. I still do that when the layout allows, bearing on wood beats any bracket ever made. Takes a bit more layout and a steady hand with the saw, but a set of stairs done that way will outlast the deck around it.

Update: tried the bar clamp trick from the ledger guy, clamped both stringers up hard before touching the screws again, and that got three of the four sitting dead flush. Still fighting the fourth. Rechecked it and the top cut looks a hair off like the one poster said, so the tab rocks on one side. Is a thin shim actually a bad idea there, or better to just recut that stringer?