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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 11, 2019

visually inspected to ensure that they were defect free and strong enough for
jointing.

Specimen Preparation

Specimens for the bending and compression (parallel and perpendicular to grain)
tests conducted as Test Series 1 were prepared in accordance with BS 373:1957.

Each finger jointed timber specimen had a finger length of 19 mm, tip width of 1.0
mm, tip gap of 0.2 mm and a pitch of 4.5 mm. The control specimens used for the

tests were made of clear timber species and had the same dimensions as the finger
jointed specimens.

The specimens were finger jointed at mid span under normal exposure conditions
using Fevicol SWR water resistive adhesive.

For the compression tests in Test Series 2, specimens of clear finger jointed and

normal glue jointed sections of non-standard timber were prepared at STC, Galle.
Finger cutting machinery of the STC were used to machine the specimens (Figure

2).

Figure 2: Finger cutting machines

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