Re: Interesting Joint

a very interesting joint today. Chinese/Japanese in origin, it is

>used to join wood end to end,

In English timber-framing practice, this is an edge-halved scarf joint.

It's typically regarded as mid-14th to mid-16th century work. Before this a splayed scarf joint was used, afterwards a face-halved scarf joint. All three are widely seen and are a valuable means of dating old timber-framed buildings.

For the splayed scarf, (the mating faces are sloped, and in two parallel planes. It's locked by a rectangular peg (or pair of wedges) knocked into the gap between the two steps in the sloped faces. They're hard to lay out. and take a while to cut because it's a sloped-grain surface. After the Black Death had killed 1/4 of the population, there was need for a simpler joint that the surviving carpenters could have cut by unskilled labourers.

The face-halved scarf is even simpler to cut. Imagine turning the large flat surface by 1/4 turn, relative to those stopped mortices. Now the whole thing can be marked on a single face and sawn out without chiselling into a stopped corner. The face-halved joint is much less strong (it's still strong, but only in one direction) but it can be made by even less skilled carpenter's labourers.

A couple of weeks ago I was at Cressing Temple barns in Essex. These are a pair of 13th century timber framed barns and show both styles of halved scarf joint. Pretty long timbers too - some are over 40' in one piece.

Reply to
Andy Dingley
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On Fri, 28 May 2004 01:19:41 +0100, Andy Dingley stated wide-eyed, with arms akimbo:

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looking for a picture of the beams/construction, but the exterior is impressive, too.

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turning mystery. Can you answer the question he poses?

- Yea, though I walk through the valley of Minwax, I shall stain no Cherry.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Your post got me Googling for images of TF joints. Very inspiring. I really want to timberframe one day. Maybe my next shop...

Thanks for the post,

-Mike

Reply to
Mike Reed

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