Mo,

First off, nice looking frame. I like the rotated king.

We're doing one like that now, except it's a really low pitch (4 in 12). Looks like a similar span. Required a 1" allthread to handle the tension at the heel.

I know your're trying to avoid a can of worms, but I could be more helpful if I knew the pitch, span, and distance between king posts? Assuming 12 in 12, 24', and 16', you may be able to make the end trusses work with the heel joint you show, but the middle truss will have twice the tension -- quick mental math says 6 or 7 kips at the heel (assuming no snow). Hard to do with pegs. If the span or ridge length is more than that, it's even harder to do.

If I were building it without an engineer's advice (which I wouldn't do of course), I'd use dry wood for the tie, make sure the ends where the tenon is is perfect wood, use perfect wood for the rafters, and put a 2 1/2" thick at least dovetailed thru tenon in it with a wedge below the tie, and try to fit about four 1 1/4" pegs in there. I'd also gorilla glue the wedge.

The dovetail and wedge would be there in case the pegs broke to act as a sort of breaking system so that trouble could be spotted in plenty of time to repair it with ironwork as the joint slowly crept open.


I don't know where the frame is but if it's in snow country you can forget about it.

Also, it'll be wobbly without more bracing. I'm constantly frustrated by how "flexible" timber frames are -- even well cut b


Just my quick thoughts, thanks for posting -- this is fun.