I've made a slideshow of a post bottom repair. It doesn't show the comments in the slideshow for some reason, which kind of defeats the purpose. I'll have to see if I can edit it later.

Dave,

Nice clean joint. Is this part of the early Dutch Barn you have been working on?

Yes. We have two Dutch barns now. This one was started in 1798-99 according to the dendro. I started cutting repairs in Feb, but had no repair material. So now I'm putting the other half of the joints together. They look good so far, but I'm worried about shrinkage. Those four bridled scarfs in the last shot are the purlin post bottoms. I've roughed them out and am going to wait as long as I can before the final fitting to the posts. You're welcome to stop by and see the barns.

Nice job on the slide show, and the joints of course....

Thanks Jim. There are comments in the pictures if you look at them individually. They explain what's going on. I could link each pic here and add commentary.

Nice work Dave. It's good to see different ways of removing stock.
I was going to say something about your methods but have decided not to.

Why not? I'm always looking to see how other people do stuff.

The finished surface was awesome Dave but to get there you spent a lot of time cutting cross-grain all the way down when 90% of that could have been blocked off from the end maybe with one more saw cut. In the beginning after your initial saw cut, you then used a chisel to cut a wedge then proceeded with the Axe from there to the end. Although the process looked very professional, it left me scratching my head. You know what Dave, there are probably some things I do that would leave you and others with the same feeling so let's leave it at that.
Thane

I would not have changed much, Thane. If you notice in pic #5 Dave is only demoing the chisel, he really use an axe as seen in #6, notice the ugly knot. I might have use the bandsaw, or even ripped it with the orange/white saw. I also would have utilized the lipped adze after the axe. Looks pretty much by the book for hand tool. I can chop faster than handsawing and wood is being removed at the same time.

I might have shifted the whole joint into some clearer wood, but maybe that was not an option.

Looks nice, Dave.

Tim

If the comments were available, it would have been more logical. I try to never rip saw anything if at all possible. Yes, the chisel was just a demonstration of how it could have been done in clear wood. I was dealing with some serious knot whorling there. With the axe, I can rough that out down to less than an eighth-inch from the line in maybe a minute. Then I pare to the line on either side to establish the plane, and pare to the line with the slick.

I have cut some long repairs on the Wood-Mizer, but unless the mill is un-tarped and ready to go, it's not worth it on such small stuff. We have a Big Mak, but you still have to hand saw the middle of the two cuts and pare to the line. My axe is a little small, just a little 1 3/4#, but it's really sharp, and makes fast work of white pine. I spent more time messing with the camera than it would have taken me to cut the repair un-interrupted.

Tim, in the last photo of the four roughed out repair pieces, I used an all orange ripsaw to cut out the tenon. Those are 11"x14" purlin post repairs that I want to dry some before I final fit them. The big Husky made very fast work of it.

Thane, I enjoy learning the different approaches people use. We all do things according to the tools at hand, and our personal preferences. I appreciate hearing how you would have tackled the repair.