Building Shed Roof Rafters

A useful shed roof rafter calculator to calculate the rafter length for the given dimensions of the roof of the building or a structure.

Building shed roof rafters.

How to build a shed roof step by step. The truss sides will be equal in length and width to fit equally on the shed walls. Make a birdsmouth notch at the end of each rafter to help it fit into place. Mark and cut the first rafter ends 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.

Each beam is notched at the bottom called a birdsmouth so that it rests flat on top of each wall. At the top where the rafters meet they are either angled to meet at a point or attached to a horizontal ridge beam. The roof rafters provide integral structural support to the roof. Finally there is a barn type or gambrel shed roof.

A ridge beam runs the length of the shed roof connecting every pair of rafters. Rafter is the beam supporting the building. Find its length with our online rafter length calculator. First cut your rafter boards to size using a circular saw to make sure they fit your roof.

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. The ridge end of the rafter and often the eve end will need to be cut to the angle of the roof slope. This is similar to the gable shed because the trusses will be in two different cuts because of the two different angles. The gable shed has a roof like a house so the roof trusses will have a peak in the middle.

Before you cut your boards you ll need to measure the width of your building and calculate the exact length of each rafter. If your project had a rafter length of 8 or less a safe and strong method is to use 2x8 framed 16 on center. Code to add this calci to your website.