Traditional Rafter Roof Construction

The timbers are often 400mm or so centres and vary in size according to span.

Traditional rafter roof construction. Every piece is measured cut and fastened together to form the rafter. If you re framing a gable roof on a new house or building a shed or even a doghouse with a gable roof you ll need to cut a number of roof rafters. Traditional or cut roofs usually comprise a series of sloping timbers rafters fixed to a wall plate at their feet and a ridge board or possibly a wall plate at their head. Roofs are framed in five basic designs.

The first step in building the roof rafters is to cut one rafter board to length with the ends angled properly and then to mark and cut the birds mouth and seat on the rafter. Rafters are the traditional means of framing a roof. Shed gable hip gambrel and mansard. Piece by piece rafter roof construction however is still the more common construction method for many buildings.

Simple roofs such as a shed or the common gable are fairly easy to construct even without plans if you understand the basics and a little geometry. A hip roof design refers to a roof where the roof sides slope downwards from a middle peak with the rafter ends meeting the exterior walls of the house. The ridge end of the rafter and often the eve end will need to be cut to the angle of the roof slope. 3 4 in including the sheathing.

50mm wide by 75mm 100mm or 125mm deep are all. Each rafter only spans half the width of the building and they start at the face of the ridge beam. At the top where the rafters meet they are either angled to meet at a point or attached to a horizontal ridge beam. A common rafter comprises two beams that extend upwards from the top plate of either side of a shed wall.

This means that each rafter is built on the job site using dimensional lumber. The building width in this example is 6 ft. Building with them is known as stick framing. Each of the four sides of the roof slope downward there are no upright or vertical parts no gables etc on a hip roof.

Possibly the most satisfiying part of the roof yet. There are two basic methods of pitched roof construction. Before you cut your boards you ll need to measure the width of your building and calculate the exact length of each rafter. A cut roof this is the traditional method of cutting the timber on site and building up the roof using rafters ridge boards joists and purlins etc the exact details being determined by the size of roof size of timbers etc.