I'm in the process of designing a saltbox style timberframe house with my architect friend for myself..I'm an experienced carpenter but not experienced when it comes to timberframing, nor is he. He's gone ahead and done up a plan for the bent and it is now my job to make corrections and apply suitable joinery. Not all that is drawn is what will be, and I acknowledge that there may be some critical mistakes, so by all means feel free criticize.
He has the rafter tails at the back drawn at full size and no joinery that I've seen really accomodates this..I like the look of the step lapped rafter seat. In the applications i've seen most of the tails are just the top portion of the rafter. I wondered if it would be possible to just carve out the step lap at the very bottom of the rafter so the bulk of the timber is above the post..(if that makes sense?) Then I might able to preserve the mass of the tails.
Would it make more sense to have the rafters mortised and sit atop a post that is cut to the proper pitch and finished with a tenon? Or maybe I could notch the dimension of the post out of the rafter a couple of inches deep so it is housed?
I should mention that these tails are there to protect the strawbale/plaster that we plan to wrap the house in.
