roof framin'

sunday, i nailed up portions of the ridge board and then raised & nailed up some common rafters.

for most of the rafters, i used a jig to hold them in place while i nailed them to the ridge & rafter plate. the jig was clamped to the ridgeboard, and it provided two slots for the top edge of the rafters to slide into.

From vinnie

a nail was placed halfway into the bottom of that edge of the rafters, and that nail would hook onto the back of the jig and hold them in place.

From vinnie

From vinnie

then i toenailed the birdsmouth area of the rafter to the rafter plate.

From vinnie

the jig came down, and i set it up on the opposite side of the ridge. the other two rafters went in place, their bottoms also toenailed, then the jig comes down. at this point both the rafter tops are still loose, so i can wiggle things a bit to get them in symmetrical positions for nailing. since the ridgeboard has some play in it, a clamp comes in handy here to help squeeze the rafters into position. then their heads are nailed off.

monday, the rest of the common rafters were nailed into position. i also tested attachment of the metal straps and the rafter blocking.

tuesday, gable walls were raised and nailed up. a bunch more blocking and straps went into place.

wednesday, the soffit blocks went up. the rest of the straps were also nailed. the soffit blocking was a pain, since the top of the walls aren't parallel with the first common rafter. this may be because the rafters aren't plumb, though i'm not sure. in any case, it was a pain, as each block had to be measured, marked, and cut. also, most of the gable walls came out off a bit, so i decided to dado the bottom edge of the blocks to fit them in plane with the roof over the walls.

the blocks i'm talking about are orange, and the wall+rafter out of parallel are blue:


i have yet to do the rear gable wall blocks. it appears each of the dados will need to be cut to a different depth, which is going to take a while. this method of roof construction is quite a pain when things are a little off. next time, a ladder-type soffit attached to the gable wall may work better. i'll have to make a comparison of the two.