Cedar roof rafter

 I have been watching a guy in Tennessee built a homestead in the Smoky Mountains, called Smoky Mountain Outpost. He is doing most of the work himself with a little help from family.  He has a sawmill.  He is building a big cabin with post and beam using mortis and tenon with wood peg joints. Although I think I could do it, it is probably beyond my years and forest resources.  He has also built a forest kitchen using post and beam but with cedar wood.  This is more compatible with my Niobrara land.  I am going to refer to his videos with comments on the construction and our site.

The Utube channel is Smoking Mountain Outpost and the forest kitchen is in season 2.  I can't get episodes right now but the one I want to discuss is the use of cedar trees for roof rafters. Installing the metal roof was season 2 episode 29 so the rafter one was before that.

What he has done is taken cedar logs with a base of 5-6 inches to 3 or 4 inches at small end and has milled them to a width of 3 inches.  That gives him a rafter of about 3 inches by 4 to 5 inches.  He places these 24 inches on center.  They look to be about 10 feet long. He has installed these himself with no help.  They are fasten with two about 8 inch screws, one to the ridge pole and one to the sill plate.  A better way! 1. One of the things he could have done better was to cut the top end of the rafter on an angle so the two opposing rafters would fit better together. It would have been easy to do with a post jig the appropriate height in the middle of his floor and the rafter resting on the post and edge of floor then with a skill saw cut the angle cut straight down.  2.  I would also worry that a single large screw is adequate to hold the roof from splitting apart with heavy snow load.  Two fixes, one would be to put wood bracing below the ridge pole, second would be to use #9 wire to fasten the opposing rafters together. The wire probably would be stronger but cedar cross bracing would look stunning.

Local Resourses:  Just east of what I propose as a homestead site is at least 1 acres of solid cedar trees. These are all about 6 inches at the base.  They are pretty uniform.  You can not walk through them they are so thick.  What I propose is that we harvest these for rafters.  I have learned cedars have shallow roots and are easily toppled.  I suggest we delimb them as high as possible while standing then hook the tractor on the them and pull them down.  We take the log and stockpile for later milling and dispose of the root ball.  Probably would get one 10 or 12 foot rafter and a fence post from each tree. 


My thought on cabin construction is to start with his dimensions on width.  He mentions rafters span 7 feet.  My guess is that the kitchen is about 12 feet wide.  I would like to get it out to at least 16 foot in width.  My thinking now is an outside kitchen and living area ringed with individual cabins.  Cabin could be any length the only limit is span for the rafters.

Imagine a five sided deck area with individual cabins radiating outward.

Well enough for now, will follow as I watch ne.



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