Totally Grifftopic. Will you miss the water dripping down the back of your neck when you come into the house?

Why is the mortise so deep? Is it a lap or saddle joint?

You must have an enormous caulk

ing gun

I'll miss the terminal velocity snow knocking me unconscious when the morning sun warms the roof.

Its a lap joint. I like to have a lot of material around the peg holes to reduce the chances of a full split when I drive it in. The forces on the joint are minimal so it is an aesthetic choice as well.

Do you have any pictures of the wooden pegs?

I have an old one of us doing a Yeungling commercial with a peg driven but not cut off. The peg is left with edges so it bites into the joint. You can't use dowels because of weakness since dowels don't follow the grain.

thanks. I am going to order those books today. Again, beautiful work. Well done.

Did you use a hand drill to drill the holes? what size? or is in some ratio based on the thickness of the wood and joints?

I used an inch and a quarter bit in a hand drill. There are some really cool old-timey mortising rigs you can use but for the house frame I only had a long auger bit on a heavy duty Milwalkee drill. I'm sure there are ratios that could be used, but I don't get too caught up in my lack of knowlege, when in doubt I overbuild. Most of timber framing is received knowledge from failures and successes since forever. These are probably as reliable as strength of materials indexes with the exception being old growth lumber had much tighter growth rings and was (is) stronger than modern trees which grew more quickly in less dense environments.

:thumb:

very cool. looks great.

That's awesome Griff. I'm so impressed. :)

Looks great, and will be super functional as well... the question is, how many goats will it hold. ;)

Definitely not goat tight construction.

I looked up "commander". Wow. I have the end piece of an enormous beam, say, 6"x14"x24". I imagine I could bomb a hole through it and wedge it down onto a baseball bat and voila! That is one serious tool.

Griff, I applaud you for your accomplishment here. I am humbled by your skill. Congratulations on a job very well done.

I almost forgot, you can take a timber-framing class from these guys. I took a home-building course from them, but not the timber class. The Shelter Institute