Welcome!

A quick note on pegs and drawboring -- if you are going to drawbore , you need to use a tapered peg. I would deifinitely not use a standard store-bought dowel. You can get pegs from a few places -- one is Northcott Turning (www.pegs.us). They make a variety of peg shapes, including one for draw boring.

We split and shave ours from new straight grained oak and reclaimed dense old growth heart pine. They are slightly tapered octagons with a point on the last couple of inches. They are made to work with a 1/8 or so drawbore. I would also recommend 3/4" pegs for a 3" tenon


keep the mortises opposite each other and lined up on each face -- that way you have more continuous grain. On the braces opposite each other, cut the mortise through, but make sure the tenons won't touch -- leave 1/2" between them. Are you housing the braces? If no housing that will leave 3 1/2" for the tenon. That is still a pretty short tenon and I would go with a 3/4" peg in it.

GH