I'd like to return to the original topic of peg strength. If the readers are guild members there should be an engineering peg report in the members section.

My personal bias in tapered pegs would be more to Tims liking in shape but not in the making. My tapered pegs are black locust, machine made with long taper and octagonal. The basic dimensions for a one inch bore are 61/64" flat to flat on the thick end, 3/4" on the thin end, tapering back 10" and 12" overall and point the end.

When driving the pegs, I align the bores with a erectors spud wrench, drive the peg making certain the joint seats continue driving until the peg tightens inthe bore and stop once tight. The basic problem is that once high resistance to driving happens compression damage occurs on the peg or in the bore, continued driving could shear short relish. When compression damage happens in wood the damaged fiber has lost forever it's compressive strength. Also prestressing the joint reduces effective capacity. So go easy.

Jay wrote earlier about driving pegs and mushrooming and splitting and cutting off the damaged end, In my view that is completely wrong, damaged on the end means the peg and bore are injured, drive it back out and replace. So use good technique, regard setting the draw bore peg as setting a spring, over driving defeats the purpose and weakens the system.