Here is a good shot of the foot of the rafter associated with the church frame (previous post).
This maybe old hat to some of you, but to some the mystery of what type of notch or cog was used to secure the bottoms of the rafters to the upper plates lives on.
In this case the cog was fit snuggly down into a corresponding motise in the top plate, and then they used 6" wrought iron spikes to secure it there. I was surprised that no wood pins were used as a securing medium.
Also there was no overhang tail fashioned on the end of the rafter, They no doubt used another technique to apply the overhang.
I have seen angled blocks used, and on another church they mortised holes all along the plate and then inserted square support pegs to build the overhang out of.
Remember that the overhangs usually carried right around the building corners and identical returns were applied.
For those of you that never applied historically an eve return it is tricky to replicate, especially if there are multiple rounds of trim that needs also to be returned as well as carrying these multiple rounds up the gable ends.
One such project that I worked on had 5 rounds of different trim of varying sizes and shapes, one round being fashioned out of 4 by 4" pine.
