Hello,

Some old pegs taken out of some windows I've been rebuilding. How equivalent to whatever timber frame context you may have in mind I dare not say but shows the deflection and compression involved, with the intact long grain and rectilinear cross section.


And then the set of drift pins I found amongst a lot of other old stuff left here when we moved in. Could even be the very one used to set up the barn here.



The points of the drift pin driven through the mortice hole into the unmarked tenon, when oriented right with the back of the pin on the shoulder side of the hole will give a reliable and consistent indication of where to drill the hole in the tenon. If the pin should be difficult to haul back out of the assembled joint you could put a big spike through the hole there to help out. These are the standard form always used here.

Nothing wrong with using a steel hammer in chisel work, so long as both hammer and chisel are compatible.

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff