Hi everyone
Good discussion, and I might say one that is important if you are working towards a nice tight framework.
Proceedure for prefitting each bent at UCV and preparing it for the eventual erection day, was to ensure that all the pin holes were predrilled properly, and that meant using the drawbore method. Without this method the joints would be sloppy and allow the frame to eventually develop movement due to wind forces.
We would predrill all the holes through the timbers at the exact location of each mortise, being careful to get them as straight through the timber as possible.
The next step would be to slide the tenon into the mortise until it bottoms out on the sizing lines.
Dropping a hand auger then into the predrilled holes would leave a tell tale marker point on the tenon, we then would slide the tenon out of the mortise, move over the bit approx 3\16" towards the shoulder, and again carefully bore the hole through the tenon.
Too much draw could split the timber so one had to be careful as well.
One point that I would like to focus your attention on is during this fitting and boring process it was very important that the whole framework was as level as possible, so that the timbers as you slid them together for the fitting, would be tight across the whole face of the seating (where they meet), especially on the down side that was not observable from the upper working face
NH
