It was very difficult to make a three way intersection of timbers. So they invented the English tying joint to solve that problem. Most posts are tree trunks upside down so that the flair of the butt creates the gunstock look. And the grain follows out the flair and makes it stronger.
At TTRAG one year the fellow from England was here doing a slide show and he showed us one barn they took apart over there to either repair or move. And they found that four gunstock posts were made from one tree. The quartered it. He showed us a slide of the four pieces put back together and you could see the grain match up.
This lead them to look for other pieces with similar grain patterns and the found lots of smaller pieces that were cut off of other bigger pieces. And it was quite interesting to see how many pieces of say one or two trees were used in this barn.

I'm sure you know but the tenon on the upper part goes one way and the tenon on the lower part of the gunstock goes 90° to the upper one. So that the plate is secured as well as the tie beam.

Lots of fun to cut:


Jim Rogers