Have you ever noticed in high quality backyard structures that during certain weather changes, it seems to look differently? What I mean, is that the hinges sometimes seem very tight, but at other times loose? This is what is called the contracting and expanding of the timber that forms your backyard structure. That’s what timber does. When there is a high humidity outdoors, the wood wants to soak up all of the water, so it expands. It is the same during the winter verses the spring and summer. On sunny days, it’ll probably return to normal, or back to “loose” stage. To bypass this, some of the companies tend to give a little leeway in each joint so the expanding and contracting can occur, but, to be frank, the spaces don’t look too professional, don’t you agree?
There is a certain way to fix this problem with no outward appearance being altered. Lets take a pergola from Utah for example. There are many joints that need to join together the posts and the beams to each other, so on a backyard structure such as this, if all of them had spaces, it would look very sloppy looking. So what Utah has done, is make a dovetail joint. Which means that with high resource tools, you rout out a dove tail slot in the post that matches up with the beam to make it fit just like a perfect puzzle piece. For further explanation and a visual on what I am talking about, see the you tube video on YouTube titled Western Timber Frame: Dovetail Joints vs. The Standard Joints. You’ll be quite amazed.
