How good is mortise and tenon construction, and why didn't ancient carpenters use nails?

Tenon and mortise construction is unique to China, ancient carpenters did not use nails because the nails had not been invented at that time this kind of thing, and tenon and mortise construction in fact do not need to use a nail to build a building, which is where the wisdom of the ancients!

Tenon and mortise features

I believe that many people have played with building blocks, tenon and mortise structure is somewhat similar to the blocks that children play, in the process of building blocks is not any auxiliary materials, just need to press the two blocks together. Tongue and groove construction is the design of two parts or two results through the concave and convex, so that they can be merged together, as long as the press together, the two parts of the results can be tightly together, not at all lose to the nail.

The advantages of mortise and tenon construction

And the biggest advantage of mortise and tenon construction is that it is aesthetically pleasing, if you use nails to merge two pieces of wood together, it will make the surface of the wood appear to be the nail head marks, and the two boards, if it appears that the phenomenon of the two boards are not aligned, then you also need to pull out the nails. But the nails have already done one damage to the template, so it is said that the nails will be very destructive to the aesthetics.

But mortise and tenon structure is different, it does not need to use nails, completely rely on their own structure to stabilize, so that the two parts together, the surface is not to see any traces of processing after the interface. It is as if the two parts are naturally together. Moreover, since the connection is not visible from the outside, the structure will be more stable as the connection will not always be wrenched.

And the mortise-and-tenon structure is unique to the ancients and is not found abroad. Now also know the mortise and tenon structure of the master has not much, but now there are a lot of existing structures still maintain the mortise and tenon structure characteristics, such as the Forbidden City, there are many palaces, there is no use of nails, but thousands of years have passed, still standing, which shows that the mortise and tenon structure is very strong. Even with nails may rust, thousands of years of time is certainly to return to repair, but the mortise and tenon structure has not changed.