First Lamp Thanks! These are real timber brackets secured to the framing with Structural Lag Screws. The roof overhang is 3'-0", and the brackets extend just beyond that. Even though they are painted, there is a small bit of metal flashing on the exposed top edge of the brackets to protect from long-term deterioration due to rain.
Generally, any gable (or rake) overhang past 2'-0" needs special structural consideration. The lookouts you see spaced at 2' on center in the soffit are 4x material laid flat to keep the overhang from sagging over time. Hope this helps!

khaacker Yes, thanks! One more question if you don't mind - I am looking at the use of Knee brackets to try and add interest to a 60's ranch. Would be strictly decorative, but I want correct scale. Our gable is 22 ft with a 12" overhang so we were thinking a 15" extention using 5x or 6x for the beam, not sure for the brace and backing. Your sizing is in better scale then a lot I've seen and it is hard to decide just holding pieces of wood up against the house. Any suggestions you could offer would be great! Thanks again.

First Lamp This one's tricky because it depends so much on the specifics of your home (# of stories, roof pitch, etc). That said, brackets like this under a shallow overhang like yours are tough to pull off well since the overhang doesn't appear to need it.

mnoswad1 Sorry, but I have to interject. Don't force your 60's ranch to become a craftsman.....it wont work, because its not one..........embrace what you have, look to the best of your kind of house and start there.......oh, and don't ever use vinyl siding.

khaacker Thanks for the input. I am concerned about how it would look but I have been playing around with a photo of our house and cutting and pasting pictures of the knee brackets from this site onto our house and I really like how it looks in the photo, but in reality it could be a different story. We are planning on using LP Smartside an 8" lap siding and the bottom half of the front of the house is brick. I don't like vinyl so no worries there. It's an L shaped ranch and 1 gable end faces the street. I guess I'll have to do a 'mock up' and see how it looks. thanks for the help.