Assembly

Every piece arrives flat, in one box, with a mallet, four spare pegs and a single printed sheet. There is no hardware bag, because there is no hardware.

Before you start

• Work on the floor or a rug, not on a hard table edge.
• Lay the parts out and find the stamped numbers on the underside of each one. They pair up: rail 3 goes into leg 3.
• Do not drive any peg until every tenon on that piece is seated by hand.

The three steps

1. Stand the frame up

Set the two ends on the floor and bring the long rails to them. Nothing is fixed yet, so the frame will lean — that is expected. Get every tenon started in its mortise before you commit to any of them.

2. Seat each tenon by hand

Push each tenon in until it stops. It will stop roughly 4.5 mm short of the shoulder and leave a visible gap. This gap is correct. It is the draw, and closing it is the peg’s job, not yours. Do not try to hammer the shoulder closed first — you will bruise the timber and you will not get it any tighter.

3. Drive the peg

Start each peg by hand; it should stand up on its own. Then eight or so taps with the mallet, firm but not heroic. You will feel the resistance change as the peg finds the offset and starts pulling. Watch the shoulder: the gap closes as the peg goes down. When the peg is flush with the face, stop. The joint is finished and there is nothing to tighten later.

Taking it apart again

Every peg goes through. Put a nail set or a 8 mm punch on the small end and tap it back out the way it came. Keep the pegs; they can be reused two or three times before the taper is worn enough to matter, which is what the spare set is for.

If something is not right

• The peg will not start. The holes are not lined up because a tenon further along the frame is not fully seated. Seat it and try again.
• The gap has not closed and the peg is flush. Something is trapped in the mortise — usually a shaving. Tap the peg out, clear it, re-seat.
• The peg sheared. Punch the remainder through and use a spare. This is what riven pegs are for; it is not a structural problem.