Hammer-beam roof

I had created one of these structures using Sketchup and mistakenly called it a truss or support. I learned recently that these structures in an open timber roof are called "hammer beam" type roofs. For any would be castle-builder a "great-hall" is probably on the wish list to be built as part of the structure, and having a hammer beam type roof over the room is probably part of the design. Thanks to modern construction techniques one could probably build a roof in such a manner that the components of a hammer beam type roof would not be structural. Try designing a hammer beam type roof and telling the building code department that it's going to hold your roof up. I think you might run into some trouble there unless you're a structural engineer, and even then I'm sure there'd be resistance.

Just my opinion, but I think the better route using modern materials to accomplish a hammer beam type roof in your modern castle would be to use a steel ridge beam supported on either end of the room by steel supports. This allows for a very strong structure holding the roof peak up with no worry about sagging. The hammer beam roof trusses could be constructed of lighter wood and/or hollow glued-up components (like a hollow square table leg) and affixed to the roof and walls. It would still likely require stronger roof rafters as the hammer beams would likely be partially suspended from them and thus incur additional expense in the roofing materials, but it would seem to be cheaper than having heavy, solid beams engineered to support the real thing.

The picture is from Buffalo Architecture, more info on hammer beam roofs there, as well as Wikipedia.

(EDIT:Updated links due to changed web address)