Rafter Layout:

So one might ask, how do you lay out rafter cuts when you are using the Daisy Wheel? Some have suggested that you might scribe rafter pairs together to get them to match, but I can think of a much easier way. Triangles. If you look at the roof layout in my previous post, you can observe that the roof peak is divided exactly down the center into 2 equal right triangles.

To make the plumb cut at the top of the rafter, one must simply transfer this triangle onto the end of each rafter. To do this, the hypotenuse is aligned along what will be the top edge of the rafter, with the short leg of the triangle oriented toward what would be the center of the structure, or the end of the rafter as it were. The short leg of this triangle supplies you with your exact plumb cut. More accurate than a framing square I would guess. It is important that the vertex where the hypotenuse and the short leg meet be positioned exactly where you want the peak of the roof to come out on the rafter, this way you can be assured that each rafter will come out to the exact right length. Any such angle cut anywhere on the structure can be made in a similar way, all you have to do is transpose the triangles from the daisy wheel onto the timbers. One easy way to do this is to make 3 lengths of some material such as good stout string (that won't stretch too much) each equal to lengths of the triangle, only scaled up a bit (by way of dividers) then orient them until all three points match up. Then you have a perfect triangle.

Now I should also mention how I transfer the lines from the daisy wheel into the reel world. The answer: Dividers

The building shown previously was drawn with a 4" radius circle. If you observe, the height of the walls to the first cross member is equal to radius of the circle. SO if I want the walls to be 8 feet high, then I assume the entire graph to be drawn in a scale of 4" = 8', or expressed rationally 1:24 So that means that I find all real world measurements by setting the dividers to the length of any given building layout line on the graph, and step it off 24 times in a nice straight line. It's very important to have good straight lines or else all of your measurements will end up a little off. If you do this, you can then create a ground layout that allows you to do a french scribe method or some other such method. If you want to do square or mill rule, then you will have to do a little bit of math and measuring to find out how your timbers will actually set up to these lines.