Anyone have any suggestions for fixing a messed up drawbored scarf joint? Stupidly, I bored the offset hole on the scarf tenon to draw the joint APART, not together (too much time in the sun that day). Its a halved and bridled scarf, and since the tenoin is only 3"x6"x1 1/2" and the pegs are 1" diameter, there isn't much wood left to bore all new holes. Anything that would allow me to fix the joint without unpegging an entire sidewall bent and discarding two 18' long plates with about 15 mortises each would be a huge help. I'm desperate, considering the fact that we're supposed to do the raising on Saturday 7/20 (3 days from now).

On the other hand, how bad would it be to simply leave it as-is? The joint opened up about 1/8" along its entire length, but both end tenons are fully engaged end-to-end. Would shimming the gap solve the problem? How about removing the tenon pegs and boring new peg holes through the lap instead? As a last resort, what about through-bolting?

I'm pulling my hair out here. 30 seconds of poor judgement have potentially cost me many hours of labor and over 100bf of lumber. Any miracle cures anyone can suggest?

Thanks in advance,

Dave in Padanaram

Ya' might think I'm crazy (wouldn't be the first) but try this. Drill a hole in similar sized stock. Put a thin layer of plastic (like Saran wrap) on inside of hole. Fill hole with fiberglass (resin or gel, not bondo) making sure the bottom side is covered to keep the goop in. When all is set (important for all to be really set) you now measure for the new "correct" hole so you can change from a push-bore to a draw-bore. Now drill through the wood and fiberglass (clamps and a drill press may be in order). You should end up with an arc shaped piece of fiberglass that can fit into your existing problem hole. 'Course if you can get you scarf joint apart do the same thing but without the plastic wrap - I had it in there as a mold release. This should get you a strong bearing surface with low crushability. I'm sure there may be more elegant solutions though I would worry about a wood plug working its way out as you drive the pin. Good Luck!

Dave, I made the same mistake on my project, but only on a sill plate. I think Andy had a good suggestion fiber glass resin or maybe epoxy, sounds strong.I took a piece of oak 1x and drilled through a 1" hole then clamped the board to the tenon at the right location and drilled a new hole through the tenon with a hole saw. You now have a hole that is oblong by 1/4" I then took a piece of 2" thick oak and layed out 2 1" circles with the center lines at 1/4" apart. I drilled a hole through the first circle and then with a band saw cut around the outside of the line of the second hole which left me with a plug that was 1/4 moon shaped. I glued the plug in place with polyurethane glue and held it in place with a slightly undersized peg until dry. This worked for me and after 9 months the joint is still tight. Hope this helps, Good luck, John...

I see three options.
1) if the gap is only 1/8" you might just leave it alone
2) you can cut out the scarf tenons and replace with spline pieces
3) you can increase the size of the holes. I think if I was to do this I would elongate the existing 1" diameter holes by just a little bit more than your 1/8" gap. You won't lose any relish on your tenons beyond the 1/8" mistake you now have. You will need to make custom shaped pegs. And you can still get the joint to draw up tightly.
To visualize this just draw two overlapping 1" circles whose centers are offset by 1/8" to represent the situation you now have. If each hole was elongated 1/8" in the proper direction you would have a regular fit. If each hole was elongated by a little more than 1/8" in the proper direction then you would get a drawbored fit.

Hope this helps. Good Luck.
--Chip

Hello dstrecker:
Here is some food for thought on this problem, I have some background in traditional millwrighting techniques, and in an 1846 Mulley Mill that I was entrusted with to keep in operation, the large guides that house in the head blocking mechanism were held in place with wedges instead of pins. These wedges were tapered to pull in tightly the guides whose ends were motised through a large timber. I see no reason why with a mortising chisel you could cut away and fashion a tapered rectangular hole through both the tenon and the timber and use a hard wood wedge to pull the scarf together. I hope this helps--NH

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. In the end, I talked it over with a couple of local guys who have some experience with timber framing, and we decided that the gap was not big enough to warrant re-boring it. In the end we simply wedged and shimmed the gap, and it seems as strong as it needs to be, probably more.

We had a great day for the raising Saturday, and managed to get the whole frame up (minus a couple of dovetailed purlins that I wanted to fit in place) in about 4 1/2 hours, including a lunch break. For a picture of the (almost) completed frame go to:

http://www.romanroxe.com/barn/barnframe2.jpg

Also, there are some more shots at:

http://www.searson.com/2002/07/barn

I'm gonna have more photos up on the web soon. If anyone's interested, I'll post the URL here.

Thanks again,

Dave in Padanaram

For anyone who is interested, I put together a bunch of shots documenting the construction and raising of the barn. To view it, go to:

http://www.romanroxe.com/barnshow/

Thanks to all who responded to my posts.

Cheers,

Dave in Padanaram

Dave: Nice photo set. What program did you use to automatically advance the slides to each new frame every 10 seconds? Jim

Photoshop 7 has a "Create Web Slide Show" feature. Tell it how big you want the pics and the thumbnails, what colors, etc, throw a folder of pictures at it and it generates a web page and all the graphics. Pretty cool.

Cheers,

Dave

For the complete story of the barn raising, go to http://www.tirnan.org/barn.php

A video of the raising is going up soon as well.

Cheers,

Dave in Padanaram