hip rafter brace blocks
This afternoon I tried to work on the structure, but I couldn't find suitable screws for attaching the hip rafter brace blocks.
What do I mean by "hip rafter brace blocks"? I looked for standard carpentry or woodworking jargon for the blocks, but the most comprehensive woodworking glossary I could find didn't get much more specific than "corner brace".
The hip rafters are "2×6" lumber, which are really about 1.5 inches by 5.5 inches;. (Lumber is typically sized by the wood that comes from the sawmill, which is trimmed down at the lumber mill.) The next step in building the roof will be to attach the fascia (made of ¾ inch by 5.5 inch "1×6" boards) to the ends of the hip rafters, but I have doubts about how strong the joints between the ends of the hip rafters and the ends of the fascia boards will be, given that I'd need to screw two fascia boards into the end-grain of each hip rafter. So, I'm adding corner braces, so that the screws through the fascia don't have to go through so close to the ends of the boards.
(Illustration needed.)
I cut the braces some time ago. I started with a scrap of 2×4 about 40 inches long, and cut it approximately diagonally corner to corner, then cut the short end to give a pair of boards with angles of approximately 67.5°, 24.5°, and 88°, and sides of (mathematically) 3.5 inches, about 1.57 inches, and about 3.79 inches. I needed 16 braces for the eight hip rafters, so I cut the two 40-inch triangles into eight pieces about five inches each - a little less than the 5.5 inch width of the fascia.
Then I got sidetracked on some other, indoor projects.
So, today I had the inspiration to get back to the structure. But the lack of suitable screws sidetracked me again. After picking up "T" from school, we went to Dunn Lumber for a box of inexpensive screws.
By the time I got to work on installing the brace blocks, light was fading. I started working from the remaining daylight, but because I was still feeling productive, I hauled a plastic LED shop light out, and balanced it up in the rafters with me.
The first pair of brace blocks took quite a while, because I wasn't quite sure how to clamp them while I glued and screwed them to the rafters. Clamping triangular things isn't easy! Of the 16 brace blocks I had to install, I got four in place, on the hip rafters that reach to the ends of the north side of the structure.
Post-quarantine report: T to school, T from school, Dunn Lumber.