Originally Posted By: mo
Welcome Andy.

First off, nicely done for a hobby.

Secondly, there are others around here that are more experienced on this, but I will give it a go.

Yes the queen posts being directly over the ground posts would be stronger. Of course this would change your pitch since you obviously want 12' for stalls. (From what Ive read you want no less for the horses). Or you could change the height of the upper plate.

It also looks like (might be the perspective) that your loft is taller than your ground floor.

The connection at the queen posts (in my opinion) should be changed. That tie should probably drop so the queen posts join with the plate. It also looks that some larger bracing (more run) would be helpful.

I know you are wanting to build a scaled model (thus joinery is probably not an issue) but the connection between the lower pitch, plate, and upper rafter has always got me thinking. I think this might work. Extended tenon through queen to rafter.



Anyway, hopefully some others will chime in. This gambrel stuff has gotten a lot of discussion before.


Thank you for the reply. You are correct, I am trying to keep 12' stalls. I am quickly finding out that these gambrel roofs are not as simple as they seem. I am trying to keep the 12' stalls while also trying to keep the roof slope around 7-12 and 12-7. This is a challenge for me.

Thanks a ton for that sketch, I can see clearly what you explained. However, how would I attach the upper rafter to that?

And yes, as it is now, the loft is taller than the ground floor. I looked at some post and beam gambrel barns and it looks to me that most lofts are taller (to me anyway) than the ground floor. Again, I am not familiar with this stuff, so I definitely could be wrong.



^^^ Here's a pic of a gambrel that looks like the loft is taller than the ground floor. This is actually a 36' wide horse barn with 12' stalls, but I kind of didn't want to copy someone else work, but I may have to do that. I am not all that crazy about the roof pitch on that one either.

Thanks a lot for the help, much appreciated.

Andy