Pacific Post and Beam entered three tenons in the Tenon Testing at the 2012 Western Timber Framer’s Guild conference.  The tenon pictured above was the second entry, a shaped tenon with a wedge/block.  The tenon is inserted into the mortise.  (The shape of the mortise is drawn on the side of the beam)  The dovetail side of the tenon is then shifted to the side of the mortise with the matching shape.  Everything is held in place by inserting an oak wedge/block.

The dovetail side of the tenon sheared off parallel to the wood grain.  This connection held close to 8000 lbs before the tenon was pulled out of the mortise.

Next week we’ll post the connection that held 40,000 lbs before the engineers stopped the testing because the capacity of the equipment had been exceeded!