I took this whole Thanksgiving week off of work with the idea of putting in a bunch of work on the house and hopefully closing it in. Between family commitments and weather, I managed to get a few solid days of work in, and got it pretty close to closed in over the enclosed garage; the area over the breezeway is next.

Production work on the rafter tails. In an effort to stave off boredom, I treated this task as an exercise in optimization... working to improve my workflow and efficiency to get the per-piece time down as low as possible. For each piece, the workflow was: 

• check for crown and flip if necessary,
• align the template and mark the outline, 
• mark the end of the notch cut and the start of the second step cut on the rafter where the saw rail hides the start/end points during the cutting,
• set the pencil down where I can reach it easily after aligning the template next time, and put the template where it's out of the way but in easy reach after the check for crown,
• cut the long straight cuts for each step with a rail-guided circular saw
• cut the bearing notch with the rail-saw, and set the saw down where it's in reach after the marking is complete on the next rafter
• pick up the jigsaw and move to the end of the rafter, around the left side
• cut the cross-grain portion of the end notch
• move to where the rafter is pointing directly at me and cut the rip-cuts on the end notch and the remaining waste in the straight step cuts,
• move around the right side of the end and make the three curved cuts, starting at the tip and working toward the bearing notch, and toss the waste out of the way,
• slide the rafter lengthwise so I can keep working from the same position, cut the waste out of the bearing notch, and put the jigsaw where I can reach it immediately after putting the circular saw down next time,
• then carry the rafter to the torching area and start over on the next one.

 In this first batch of 18 rafters, I started with a time of about ten minutes to cut each piece, and ended up at the above sequence completed in just under 5 minutes per piece.

Here's that same batch of rafters after the scorching and brushing.

My dad and brother-in-law were in town for the week, and helped me with a couple of days of work. It was extremely helpful having some extra hands around, especially during the sketchy business of setting/leveling the ridge board on a chintzy little ladder right at the edge of the second floor deck. I wasn't at all excited about that potential fall, and it was good to have some help. This was the end of the half-day of work on Thanksgiving morning. 

Just a little context shot of the concrete wall, looking down the steps. It's fun to see how the character of these design elements changes and settles into place as they are incorporated into the structure.

These are the spacer blocks for the rafter tails, cut using the same process as for the rafter tails as described above. These were the first real use of the lumber from Diablo (the big redwood snag that I had cut down last spring).

Torching...

...and the finished surface on the exposed edge of the spacer. 

Here's the end of the day on the day after Thanksgiving. Starting to look like a roof!

Another view from the future house location.

...and another view at the usual spot up the hill at the end of the day Friday.

Here's the next batch of rafters. I completed the cutting and torching and brushing on 12 of these in under an hour... I could really feel the impending rain nipping at my heels at this point.

Here's the end of the day shot on Saturday. I got the next 12 rafters in place, and ready to start nailing on the sheathing.

I was able to work on the roof for the second half of the day on Sunday, after spending the first half of the day with my family before they checked out of the rental house and headed down the road. 

Second course of plywood. I'm doing this work from inside, and leaning way over between the rafters to nail the bottom edges. That's way better than trying to work from the top side of a 10:12 roof when it's damp and slippery.

End-of-the-day shot on Sunday. I might have some hope of getting this covered up before the rain is forecast to start on Wednesday.  I had hopes of getting the roofing felt on by the time the rain started, but at this point it looks like I'll probably be throwing plastic tarps over it at the last minute: just after nailing down the last piece of sheathing and just as the first drops of rain hit the roof...