Hi Jon,

There is logic (to a point) in your shared method. I would point out that Jim's point is very true from both a practical and historical perspective.

As to actually "worrying" about the drift of a trunnel bore going off track, it really isn't that big an issue all things considered.

From a contemporary approach, I agree with both Jim and Will on their reasonings.

I can also share from a "traditional approach" system prespective, that holes seldom to never got board first. The documentation evidence I have found hasn't suggested it (not to say that its not out there?) nor would tradtional logic support such an approach or worry about it drift that much.

Originally this kind of work was done with a T-Auger. As such, any extra wood to bore through would (and was!) avoided at all cost.

Most of my first frames and through my traditional apprenticeship, this was the tool of choice for creating the bore for trunnel and for hogging out mortise. With such a tool, the idea of drilling through extra wood just to avoid not paying attention to "bit drift" would be greatly outweighed by the extra labor. Paying attention to what I was doing was much easier than any extra labor of boring through more wood than I had to...

With the advent of a boring machine (miller falls is still my favorite!!) the worry of drift fell virtually by the wayside for the most part both in my personal world and from what I can ascertain historically, as any drift that would occur is negligible if everything is sharp and in operational order.

With our modern Mafell tool guides this is virtually not even something that is ever really thought about. I would also share that I do not peg most of the frames I design and/or are part of at all or very little. Often with square trunnel if it does occur. This is true for almost all contemporary frames I'm part of. Many of the traditional ones as well often don't have as many pegged joints as I see in contemporary frames. Especially braces which are seldom pegged in my experience, which seems to be a regional manifestation and mainly for the reason of raising...not joint structural integrity...

Thanks for sharing Jon...Great topic!

j

Last edited by Jay White Cloud; 08/08/18 11:06 PM.