So, In a stupid decision I had my timber milled before I had all of my joinery finalized and am now having a hard time making the joinery work with some of the dimensions the timber is at. One of the questions that has come up is brace mortise placement.

My posts are at 7X7 and some will have braces coming off of them in all four directions.

First, I'm wondering if it would be a bad idea to mortise straight through so that the tenons of the braces running east to west touch in the middle? Or would it be best to have the mortises horizontally offset from one another?

My second question is how much should I stagger the mortises of the braces that run perpindicular? In some of the images in my books it looks as though they're hardly staggered at all.

Are all four braces at the same elevation?

Two coming in with a through mortise has been done many times.

Four coming in at the same elevation doesn't leave much post left at that level.
It would be better to make two either higher or lower so that they don't all join at the same place.

What thickness braces are you thinking about using? With 7x7's you could use 3x5's and do 1 1/2" tenons.

Jim Rogers

Thanks for the reply Jim!

Yeah i was thinking I would probably have to stagger the elevations. I have 4x6 that i plan to bandsaw down to have an arch on the outside of the brace. 1.5" tenons sound good.

Can the mortises of the braces going in the opposite direction be stacked right on top of the others?

On another note I recently purchased a 2" bit and 1.5" bit from you.
the 1.5" bit works great but the 2" one doesn't seem to want to bore much deeper than a 1/5". Any advice?

There's not much meat in that post. Gives me the heebeegeebees. Honestly, standard 30-36" braces don't do that much work, so I'd drop a pair. Or get a bigger post.

JJ:
I personally checked the bits I shipped you to make sure that they would bore deep holes. I rejected one that wouldn't and it is being restored by improving the lead screw threads. Maybe yours needs the same improvement. I don't know for sure.
I thought I picked out a good one for you.
If you are unhappy with it you can return it for an exchange.



I'm not sure if I understand this question.

Jim Rogers

Could you drop the tenon thickness to 1" and house the brace as in square rule housing or haunch the shoulder line, the housing would give the bearing strength not the tenon.

Consider changing the brace length, dump the 45 degree angle and go with a 2:1 ratio, say..... drop two opposing braces down to 5 feet from the beam and run over on the beam 2.5 feet. Keep the other braces at 45s.

Size of the structure will hint at solutions. How many post do you need to configure this way? Replace just these post with 9x7s.

What species are you boring? Hardwood? Sounds like a feed screw issue. Did you try it in a few spots, you could have hit a void or pitch pocket which will stop the feed of the bit. Solid frozen wood could also be problematic, but so far this winter has been a dud, so I'm assuming frozen wood is not the issue. Sharpness may play a role, too. Does it grind through the wood or make a pleasant ssslliccing sound? Is it a coarse or fine threaded feed screw?