Friday afternoon musings about timber framing – ‘The Jowl Post’
The Scarfed Joint
Timbers can only be as long as the tree they are cut from and often that isn’t long enough to provide a continuous wallplate, soleplate or purlin running the length of a building.
Cue the nifty and ostentatious “scarfed” joint which aims to join lengths of timber to effectively create one very long timber.
Scarfed joints give the timber framer the opportunity to show off his virtuosity and attract a mate by inventing ever more complicated forms – bridled, edge-halved, lightening, stop-splayed and tabled, undersquinted with abutments………..it worked for me!
