At the recent eastern conference was a seminar titled "Real Time Problem Solving".
I found this very interesting as many different subjects were discussed.
I am interested in starting a thread about a design question.
Recently I customer asked me to design a frame and on the end gable bents he wanted queens posts into a collar beam, and then the collar beam into the rafters.
The span is 20' and the roof pitch is a 10/12. I had planned the rafter feet to connect to the top of the tie beam as he also wanted an interrupted plate and not a traditional continuous plate.
My concern was that the queens post would intersect the collar beam near the end of the collar beam and weaken it.
I felt that if the collar beam entered the sides of the queens posts it would weaken them.
I opted for both the collar beam and the queens posts to enter the rafter either side of the center point. The center point being half way from the eave to the ridge.
Having these enter the rafters here made it necessary to have a long mortise, but I felt that this was offset by the support given by the queens posts, and that the rafters were not weaken.
So, my questions is what is the best solution?
A queens to collar the collar to rafters.
B queens to rafter and collar to queens.
C queens and collar to rafter.
I'd appreciate any and all comments and reasons why any one way is better than another.
Jim Rogers
Jim Rogers Timber Designs
(In the picture below the tools are on one of the two queens posts. And the saw tip is pointing to the joint in question.)