Hi Schultz - great idea! I made a model of my frame before I actually built it to learn about the joinery. It was built to the actual design except for the number of pegs. Depending on how far you want to go and what tools you have, you can fairly easily make an exact miniature of a timber frame. I made mine at 1/8 scale so my 8x8s scaled to 1"x1". This is a very easy size to work with and my beams scaled nicely to common fractions of inches. I used some ash that I had laying around. To rough out the mortises, I used end-mill bits in my drill press and held the wood in an X-Y sliding vise so I could accurately and rapidly cut the mortises. To finish them, I only needed to square off the rounded ends of the mortises. I also used this method to form the tenons. Clearly, this could all be done with simple hand tools, but this was a fast, accurate way to make miniature beams. Good luck with your project. jekbear
