There are many ways to cut rafters. In more than 25 years of framing
houses, I have learned a variety of techniques, from cutting rafters one at
a time to production gang-cutting methods. But regardless how you produce
all the rafters that go into a house, the basic principles remain the
same for every method. Rather than get too involved
in different cutting techniques, in this article I'll concentrate
on what is required to lay out hip and common
rafters, and describe only a few shortcuts for cutting and stacking the roof.
This article follows "Simplified Roof Calculations" (3/99), in which I described how
to calculate rafter lengths using