Howdy Everyone,

So here's the simple question preamble. I've seen several references to dragon beams and dragon-and-cross assemblies now, but they've all been cases in which the rafter is coming into the assembly at a 45 degree angle; essentially, the building is square and the 4 corner hip rafters meet in the roof center. This makes it easy to create the cross at 45 degrees to the plate and tie, and the dragon at 90 degrees to the cross, putting the hip in the same plane as the dragon.

I, feeling the need to make my project as difficult as possible, want to use dragon beams on a square frame whose hip rafters don't meet at the peak, which means that the bottom end of those rafters will come into the corners at something other than 45 degrees.

Which brings me to the quandry I'm currently in; I'm left with 3 options for constructing the dragon-and-cross. 1) Does one leave the cross at 45 degrees to the plate /tie and the dragon at 90 degrees to the cross, such that the hip rafter and dragon are in different planes? 2) Or does one adjust the angle of the dragon to match the angle of the hip rafter (so that the dragon and rafter are in the same plane) while leaving the cross at 45 to the plate/tie? 3) Or does one adjust the dragon to match the angle of the hip rafter while also adjusting the cross so that the dragon-and-cross are at right angles, but the cross is not at 45 to the plate/tie?

If you could follow all that crap, you're a genius. Here's pictures to illustrate (all images are looking straight down on top of the joint):[img]http://www.flickr.com/photos/rannymo/12453124443/[/img] [img]http://www.flickr.com/photos/rannymo/12452971785/[/img] [img]http://www.flickr.com/photos/rannymo/12453124723/[/img]


Thanks for any input,
Randy