Timber Framing for the Rest of Us (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series) by Rob Roy

Author:Rob Roy [Roy, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2004-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4.21: Install toe-nails (or screws) at about a 60-degree angle. As it is driven in, the toenail on the right will drive the post to the left. See sidebar text entitled Toe-nailing and Toe-screwing on the following page.

Toe-nailing and Toe-screwing

Nails, when they became cheap, replaced dowels, dovetails, and mortise-and-tenon joints. Most nailing is called surface nailing: driving a nail straight through one board in order to fasten it to another. This is the way roofing planks and plywood are installed, as well as wooden siding.

But one of the most valuable skills in timber framing for the rest of us is to learn how to toenail properly. A toenail (in carpentry) is a nail driven at an angle that allows us to join one timber to another where they meet at right angles. It is a fairly strong method of nailing, because toenails are always installed opposite each other, as in Fig. 4.21. Some of the nails will always provide shear strength, no matter which way a timber is forced. Toenails don’t pull out easily, as you will discover when you make a mistake, and have to take your own work apart.

Toenails should be installed at about a 60-degree angle, as shown in the illustration. With two-by framing, an 8-penny (2.5-inch) toenail is started about three-quarters-inch (1.9 centimeters) up the upright. But with heavy timbers, I tend to use a larger nail, such as a 16-penny (3.5-inch) nail, and start it an inch or even 1.25-inch (3.2 centimeters) up the side of the post. With the 60-degree angle, you will still get plenty of purchase into the wood below.

The “law of the toenail” says that you will move the base of the post or beam in the direction in which you are striking. You can avoid this by marking the post in its correct position with a pencil and then starting one of the toenails until it grabs the substrate. You can drive it until the post begins to move, then stop. Install the opposite toenail as a reactionary thrust. It will move the post back into the correct position. By working on one toenail, then its opposite, you can set the post firmly, right where it belongs.

You can lessen the chance of splitting wood while toe-nailing if, first, you hit the pointy end of a nail quite stiffly with a hammer while its head bears against something hard, such as concrete. This will dull the point. A pointed nail tends to spread the fibers and split the wood, but a blunt nail will simply puncture the wood grain as it penetrates: no split. With large nails, pre-drilling the angle will also reduce the chance of splitting wood and make the nail easier to install.

As the years go by, I use nails less and screws more. Screws have the advantage of being removable. Toe-screwing is my term for using a screw instead of a nail in a toe-nailing situation. With large (3.5- to 4-inch or 10.1 centimeter) deck screws, drill a small pilot hole first to lessen the chance of splitting.

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