I’m going to be very honest here — I will not be making any in-depth attempt to describe timber frame joinery layout here on this blog as part of my documentation for building our timber frame and straw bale house. I don’t feel fully qualified, and besides, you can find some pretty good documentation elsewhere. Personally, I’m in the camp of really needing to see and do layout to actually understand it. Reading about it, and having someone describe it to me makes my brain slowly turn off. Call me visual.
However, I can say a few things about the two systems we employed when building our timber frame. They are Square Rule and Scribe Rule layout. They are two singular approaches to achieving the same basic effect — making two different pieces of wood relate to each other, and join in a logical way.