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Building a Shed Roof

Bob talks with lead framing carpenter Dan Enright as he and his crew work on the shed roof over the kitchen/family room area. What complicates the job is that the shed roof ends at the corner in a hip. This means the hip rafter will determine the lengths of all the different final rafters. Dan explains how using a speed square he can determine his top cut � a four-twelve on a 45-degree angle and his "bird-mouth" cut at the other end of the rafter where it sits on the sill plate of the outside wall. Bob points out that when framing a hip it's important to alternately counter a rafter from one side with one from the other to prevent bowing out the hip rafter. With the rafters in place, it's just a matter of adding OSB sheathing and the roof is on.
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Building a Shed Roof

  computer-generated transcript - may not be 100% accurate

" Right now we're dealing with the shade roof portion over the kitchen and family room and this is essentially, I think it's a 4-pitch screw. It's a shade roof at the corner ends in a hip, so it's a little bit complicated. Now, let's take a closer look at how we cut it. Once the shade roof gets to the hip portion, you got a hip rafter that determines all the lengths of the different final rafters, and so that's what our lead-framing carpenters, Dan Enright, is doing right here. Dan, how do you determine the angle that you have to make the cut out so that it is pitch that of 4?"

" Well, what we have here is a wrap-around porch with a 4 x 12-pitch on it right comes into the hip that wraps around the corner----"

" Right."

" so, we know that the top cut is 4 x 12----"

" Uhm!"

" on a 45-degree tied in to the hip."

" Right. And so, you used your square?"

" [unk] square. It's all laid out right here on the pitch squares. This is your 4 x 12 top cut,"

" Alright. Dan, the other end, we've gotta make, it's called the bird's mouth that basically is where it sits on the outside wall, and Dan, how do you go about figuring that one?"

" Well, what we do is we have a measurement from a long point of where is gonna hit the hip to the inside of the wall, which would be this point right here----"

" Yeah."

" which is the level cut of a 4 x 12 like so."

" So here, we have a 4 x 12."

" We have a 4 and 12 and we know that we want 6 inches of c-cut because that's the width we want with the plywood."

" Right."

" 6 inches there, square down off of that."

" Right."

" So that gives us bird's mouth right there, which was made a pattern here because we have a number of grasses to cut, and this is the pattern that we used, it's all on it, so we don't have to use a square every time, you just set your pattern down."

" Exactly, and this is where the outside wall meets the rafter, great. When you're framing a hip, you have to very often make sure that you're not bowing out the hip rafter by putting too many of the rafters up against it and---- So, here we're countering the first one on one side with the first one on the other side. Now, you can see how the angle cut on the rafter fits against the hips and the bird's mouth cut rest on a steel plate. Okay, that's the last of the rafters. They'll have to put some OSB siding on it before you know what, we'll have a roof over our head."

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