Wood joints

[Cheesy]

Just what I was looking for. Some diagrams would make a world of difference though: I'm familiar with most of the joints described but I'd never heard of a scarf joint before. T'internet's a big place so I've found a photogaph elsewhere.
Cheesy

 

[big-all]

heeelllooo cheesey

youll cause no end of confusion by answering one post with a new one

 

[Dewy]

A scarf joint is used to join 2 lengths of timber together.
It's generally done with both pieces with a long shallow angle so they are glued all along the length.
They can also be made with a slight zigzag in the middle of the joint to stop one from slipping down the other.
This is how old sailing ships masts were made. The joints were tightly bound with rope to hold them together.
Their mast look long and pointed but they were made in a number of sections getting thinner as they reached the t'gallants at the top.

 

[Cheesy]

Thanks for your pointer, big-all, though my mistake was in fact to use an ambiguous subject line that coincidentally matched other posts. The first post was indeed intended to be a new post commenting on the page, not a reply to any of the previous posts. Lesson learned.

Thanks for the information on the scarf joint, Dewy. The photograph I saw was nowhere near as interesting. There's a similar joint in my loft on the deep narrow timber that runs along the apex (I don't know the name, but if it were a tent it would be the ridge pole). That one differs slightly in that rather than a zig-zig there is a large notch in each piece to create a square hole. Into the hole are driven two wedges from opposite sides. Instead of using glue, or to add extra strength, the thick end of the taper goes back at the reverse angle, and the thin end has a matching point, a bit like a spliced joint. More succinctly, it could be described as a wedged scarf joint with opposing spliced joints at each end.

Cheesy