How to Build Rafters

Video Transcript

"Rafters, one of the most interesting parts of construction. I'm Robert Markey. I've been doing construction for many years, and we're going to talk about how to build a rafter. Let's assume that you know what your pitch is. Let's say it's eight and twelve for this one. And we're going to assume you know what your length of your rafter is, and that's easy enough to calculate from the height and from the horizontal distance. But for the rafter you want to use your framing square. Use these little brass tweekers to set up on eight and twelve; give us our pitch and make our top cut, top line, okay. That's our peak, our ridge, okay. Next, you'll want to cut this so you can get a nice hook on your tape, and then you're going to measure the length of your rafter from the peak to the outside of your of your wall. And let's assume this rafter was a lot longer, and we've got our oh, a ten foot length, so we mark here at ten feet. Then, we make the same angle, okay. The outside of your wall is here, so you've calculated your distance to go from the outside of your wall to your ridge. If your wall is a two by four it's three and a half inches wide. Here's your bird's mouth, okay? This comes right down the outside of your wall. If you got plywood you would have made that four inches, okay. Fits basically the the layout from here. It depends on what kind of, what kind of trim work you have. If you want to go straight out, and then have a an end here for something like that, or if you want to do one of these. However however it it ends up being that's your cornice detail. The difficulty in the rafters is making sure your length is right on the money. I'm Robert Markey, and we're talking about how to make a a rafter."