Timbo,
My experience has been that a TF relying on compression braces only will not satisfy most building code lateral load requirements. That is wind loads up to 120mph on the coast and towards 100pmh inland, the larger the building, the larger the issue. Using vertical siding to augment the lateral load capacity is a debatable issue; many engineers are not willing to ‘assign’ any stiffness to vertical siding. Some engineers will provide ‘credit’ for SSP’s and most will accept the shear resistance of a pegged brace. Every engineer and timber framer will have a slightly different perspective on this issue, but it is an issue.

My perspective is to add stiffness to a frame when available. Pegging braces is something I’ve always done, I believe it stiffens a frame during assembly, erection and over the life of the frame. I understand that if a pegged brace tenon is asked to carry ‘too much tension’ it will fail. Actually, when frames are loaded to ‘failure’ that is the way they typically fail.

Dick Schmidt has written many excellent articles on this subject, below are some of his results.

Laterally Loaded Timber Frames 2 (March 2002)
Fully Pegged (white oak frame) Stiffness = 3270 (#/in)
Both Pegs Removed Stiffness = 623 (#/in)
The above is for a 2-story white oak frame, the results for a 1-story frame are not quite as dramatic

A very large increase in stiffness is achieved by adding SSP’s. There is not much data available for the increase in stiffness do to the addition of vertical siding, but there is a large increase. There is no data available for the added stiffness do to nailing the siding to the braces, but again there is some.

Read the articles and draw your own conclusions and than build what you are comfortable with and/or what your building inspector will allow!

Not sure why this thread went this far and my apologies to Beerfreak for contributing to the ‘off thread’ discussion.

Thanks,
pete