Carpentry Trestle

Four days in a carpentry workshop with my brother, building trestles with mortise and tenon joints.

The initial stack of wooden beams — From raw beams to glued trestles.

Cutting beams to length on the disk saw — From raw beams to glued trestles.

Finished spruce trestles next to oak trestles — My spruce trestles next to my brother's oak ones.

details

A bit out of the ordinary: my brother is a carpenter, and I joined him on a project to build trestles. Over four days we made four pairs, or rather he made three and I made one. All are spruce except one pair in oak, way too good a wood for trestles, but he had it lying around.

He taught me a lot about the machines and the trade. I noticed the strong focus on precise work and safety, which reminded me of QA and IT security in my own field.

process

Day one: from plain 6x4 cm beams and some messy calculations, we cut everything to length with a disk saw and made it straight and square on a planing machine.
Day two: we drilled the mortises with a long boring machine, making sure the nicer wood faced out, then squared the round holes by hand with a chisel. We chose square holes because I thought it would be easier than rounding every tenon. It wasn’t much easier…
Day three: we cut the tenons with a disk saw and band saw. Once set up, the machines made this quick. My brother was overjoyed with how well they fit, the same glee I get when clean code makes a later change easy :D
Day four: we chamfered the edges with a milling cutter and some chiselling, then glued everything with huge joiner’s clamps.