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.