Timber Framers Guild Forums General Conferences Camp Letts

Looking for ride from Baltimore to Camp Letts and back- have not booked flight yet- probably Monday night and Sunday Afternoon

Looking for ride from Washington DC on Aug 18 to Camp Letts, and ride from Camp Letts to Baltimore on Aug 24. Could travel anytime on those two days- staying before and after...

Hope it was a good time, sure it was. So what design won the joint busting contest? Wedged half dovetail?

A simple through tennon with one peg, all oak. A close second was a basic butt joint in DF held with simpson plates on both sides with a bunch of 1" nails. Wedge joints all started to withdraw as soon as pressure was applied, then they slowly all pulled apart.

Tom Haanen's full dovetail, well wedged from the back, plus a one inch peg that he draw-bored to 'pre stress' the joint. Brungraber was quite complimentary of the joint, indicating that it was quite strong, and perhaps more importantly, extremely tough (no abrupt failure).

I liked the ironic Danish/Teco Plate entry which must have taken all of 30 seconds to fabricate - and performed well above its allowable limit as indicated by the engineers hanging around hoping for free beer.

Look for summary data and photos in an upcoming Scantlings.

OOOOhhhh, do we have to wait. I want more details.

"Well driven" Does that mean he pounded the puss right out of it? The wedge.

What species?

A full Dove tail? Is this the better than the half, the ones that pulled apart some?

Was the stock dry or green?

2" tenon?

How was the turn out? I heard the numbers were down. I would of gone if it was during a different time of the year. The list of activities sounded grand. Tim

T-joint made from unseasoned white oak shipped from Oak-lahoma. We do have trees here. Timbers were full 6x6 so I used a 2 inch tenon. The dovetailed flaired 1/2 inch on each side. I cut 4 slots with a pull saw to within 1 inch of the tenon shoulder and carved (4) 1/4 inch wedges about 6 inches long and the thickness of the tenon riven from white oak on site. The 1 inch peg was riven from unseasoned red oak on site. It split nicely.

I know how to make the T-joint stronger now, but that knowledge will cost some beer.

Tim,

this might have been my favorite part of the week

all of the half dovetails that were not pegged, just wedged began to withdraw right away. Kind of sad, really.

But Tom's full DT was different. It seems the peg and dovetail both loaded up pretty quickly and held steady with no noise or slippage until they had put about 14k on it and then the peg popped. And then it started slowly......slowly........slowly.........withdrawing while still under about 14k of tension. It was awesome.

with a 1 1/4" peg of white oak -- who knows? it might have given the machine a run for it.

of course the half DT's were in white pine, so that didn't help either.

I have seen a barn frame locally, with a wedged half dove tail and no pegs and some are pulling apart. The problem is the barn is in bad shape, I believe if it was straight they would of been fine. I really want to see some photos of the full dove tail. Tim