Wire Saw Stonemasonry

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With modern techniques of joining materials we don’t use mortise and tendon joints very much. However, before the invention of nails in the Middle Ages and right up before the Industrial Age when they became cheap mortise and tendon systems were the primary way to mechanically fix two structural elements together.

The Egyptians and probably the Phoenicians before them used mortise and tendon joints and some of those joints were so tightly made that they still hold together today. In the restoration of the Greek Temple to Athena in Athens (The Acropolis) the columns are held together with mortise and tendon joints that were all chiseled out by hand with simple Bronze Age metal chisels and hammer.

In the Roman age right up to the development of early America mortise and tendon joints were very common, especially for the major post and beams in post and beam construction (the Romans invented the arch) and they were the only method useful for wooden construction. In the Middle Ages nails were individually made by hand and they were so rare and expensive that they were pulled out of a structure when it was torn down.

A tendon is the part of the joint that extends form the post and it is slotted into the mortise. Both joints are carved by hand and are made square. The goal is to make them as tight as possible so the fit has to be hammered together. This means that the mortise has to be of a significant diameter, say at least 1/4 the diameter of the beam. When you are joining a 12 X 12 beam to a post that means you need to create at least a 3” tendon and an exactly equal 3” slot to stick it into.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortise_and_tenon “Simple and strong, the mortise and tenon joint (also called the mortice and tenon) has been used for millennia by woodworkers around the world to join two pieces of wood, most often at an angle close to 90°. Although there are many variations on the theme, the basic idea is that the end of one of the members is inserted into a hole cut in the other member. The end of the first member is called the tenon, and it is usually narrowed with respect to the rest of the piece. The hole in the second member is called the mortise. The joint may be glued, pinned, or wedged to lock it in place.

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