Thanks for clarifying Don.
All that said I and most everyone I've worked with only do peg calcs when we are uncomfortable where the loads are heading, or if it is clearly a tension situation we haven't seen before. (And when I say 'I' I mean that I'll drop pegs in with best guesstimates based on overall loading and if required let a pro check my assumptions... but I don't go through some voodoo chart juggling spreadsheet crunching math gymnastics to get there...)
In my formative years in a TF shop learning to cut and layout entirely by hand everything was done with a framing square. No magical calculations on 90% of the joinery, and specific truss or tie joinery would have a detail on the drawing. Everything else was left for use in the shop to figure...
It definetely helps to keep pegs low on a tall beam, as the assumption is that beams will shrink down as gravity tends to settle everything. So Tim, pulling down and in is an OK thing to do. Same holds for brace and rafter connections - pulling into the corner of the joint makes good sense to me. This assumes you are drilling perfectly straight and true holes through 8-10-12 inches of material - so its all sort of relative.
Tim - I think philosophical ramblings aside - that a peg is a peg and a wedge is a wedge. Wedge being wedge shaped - tapered, with the possibility of further adjustment. I doubt that after a joint is seated further beating on a peg will pull it tighter - but a wedge certainly allows this if things loosen up, assuming you are not fighting the pegs if it is a combo...
(and yes, I guess you could cut a peg in half along a taper and make a wedge peg...)
