Cutting Rafters

The original rafters were hand hewn from smaller trees, and generally were round on two or more sides. I decided to make fresh six by six rafters. I had milled out enough material, but most of it was going to require a splice at the purlin. Tom encouraged me to use full length rafters. I had five from the initial milling, but needed 13 more. I had two logs left, both too big to get on the mill without a lot of assistance.

We used my brother in law's log truck to drag the log to the mill and try to lift it on the mill with the combination of the mill hydraulics and his grapple, but the log wouldn't go. This was after cutting the log from 20 to 18 feet. Next step was to use a chainsaw to slab off material from two sides of the log. This diet got it to the point where we could get it on the mill. It still took creativity to turn the log to get it to a usable cant.

Sitting on the mill after the rough chain saw diet.  I did get a bit more useable lumber from the slabs cut off laying on the ground.

Squared up to a 25" x 22" cant. Note the size of the cant versus a standard framing square.

We needed 13 rafters, we got 12, but also got two 3x6's that can be glued to make the final rafter. All total the log produced about 935 board feet of lumber, despite cutting off 10% of the log and hacking more off with a chainsaw.

Finished rafters after I shaped them based on one of the originals.