What is the joint called that joins two beams together to make one longer? Are there more than one? Thanks.

The name of the joint that makes two beams into one longer beam is a scarf joint. Yes there are more than one. And which one you use depends on where you'll be putting this longer beam. If you go to the timber framers guild home page and click on the section where you can down load a series of articles by Jack Sobon, you'll see section six 'scarf' joints, and you can down load the article and read up on the many listed there. Good luck, Jim

Speaking of scarf joints, I ran across one this last week in a covered bridge in Parke County, Indiana. I hadn't ever seen one like this before, so I was wondering if anyone else had? I haven't done much work with covered bridges though, so is this something that is typical in the bottom chord of burr arches and others?

The vertical metal bars are a 1/4" thick and they are notched into the beam. They touch the edge of the bolts, so I presume they are for extra bearing area in the connection to increase its tensile capacity.


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