Ken, are you saying we can be a little more slack in the fitting of our joinery? The bell shape at the bottom of the mortice is difficult to avoid with hand tools. When working, say hewn timber you don't have a easy reference to gauge the walls of the mortice, it can be a guess at times. It is sure easy to create the bell effect rather then the opposite result let alone a perfect fit. Which goes along with a perfect pre drilled peg hole, it won't happen. Did the old timers build the bell shaped mortice on purpose? I believe they did, but it wasn't for the benefit of the peg. That is a bonus.
My example was with a small oak peg. A recent small frame I helped move had soft wood pegs, tamarack. It wasn't stressed, it sat on a slab, it had draw bored pegs and they were deformed, just sightly, enough to tell. It was 8 years old. The old frames with stress placed on joints could confuse the subject. Tim
