Beautiful here this weekend, even if a bit breezy and cool.
I had decided to work on the roof of the east end bumpout because I thought it would be a morale boost. I thought it would reassure me of my roof-framing skills so I would feel less intimidated about working on the big roof again. (As it is, I can't believe I'm going to have the JayBee go through another winter without a roof!)
Working on this small roof has had the opposite of the intended effect. I made more mistakes and struggled so much with these tiny rafters! I made mistakes I don't usually make (cutting from the wrong side of a cut that wasn't supposed to go all the way across a board; forgetting to measure twice, cut once) and I miscalculated and mis-imagined and mis-cut more angle cuts than I care to admit! I thought I would never finish.
I spent all Saturday afternoon cutting and re-cutting the rafters that run on the diagonal corners of the roof. Unbelievable how many ways I could screw them up! Finally, today, I had them both done and I installed them. Looking at this one corner rafter (picture below), here are all the elements of it that I managed to mess up more than once.
1) Running from top/upper end to lower end, this rafter slopes down at a 68-degree angle. For some idiotic reason, I'd initially assumed that the angle would be the same as the other rafters (60 degrees) but, of course, if it runs longer but has to end up in the same place at the same height as the other rafters, the angle would have to be different.
2) The top/upper end of this rafter is cut at a 45-degree angle so it can lay flat against the rafter on the right.
3) The top edge of the rafter slopes down to either side at 68-degree angles from the middle.
4) The part of the rafter that hangs out over/beyond the walls is longer than the other rafters--because it projects on the diagonal but has to end at the same distance from both walls as the other rafters.
5) The lower end of the rafter is cut at 45-degree angles from the middle, so the trim boards will fit perfectly against all the rafter ends.
6) The underside edge of the rafter has a large bird's mouth cut out of it--at just the right angle so that the bottom will sit flat on the wall top plates, and the tail end of the rafter will fit right up against the outside walls.
At long last, I had the rafters done.
Next, it was a race against the fading daylight to cut and install all the blocks between the rafters. The angle cuts were more simple, but that didn't keep me from making mistakes and having to recut several of them!
There was not any daylight left to cut and install roof sheathing. Next time!
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It's been great with you posting so much these few weeks past. Seems like more than the entire past year! I hope the winter treats your project kindly.
ReplyDeleteHey, Dances, it's nice to hear from you. I'm glad you're still following along. Yes, it's true that progress on the JayBee has been more stalled than anything else since the end of the 2011 summer. Basically, unanticipated developments at my workplace had me working unbelievable hours and too wiped out to do much else. Things feel slightly better this year, and I've been trying to take tiny steps forward on the JayBee. I figure that, like with most large/daunting tasks, if I keep plodding along, it might eventually add up to getting the JayBee finished. Lately I've felt like I'm on a small roll. (Building during the fall is so much easier than the summer, without having to deal with the exhaustion and dehydration brought on by the heat.) It's too bad that winter is about to get in the way.
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