Shingle Your Roof For $60!

Image Gallery [1] To make your shingles, fold a one-inch pocket over the template and snip two cuts in the 1/8"" doubled dge. [2] Place the strap iron along the right slanting fold, bend the metal trian gle over itself, and lift the tab between the two cuts. [3] The finished product!

Here's a way to use a little ingenuity and save a whole lot of money!

A number of years ago, I covered my home's entire 1,800-square-foot roof with aluminum shingles—a job that would have set me back more than $2,000 if it had been done commercially—for a cost of only $60!

I chose aluminum because it can last a lifetime, is fire- and rustproof, and will often reduce heating and cooling expenses. In addition, such shingles are lightweight . . . an important consideration when you have to lug hundreds of them up a ladder. What really clinched my choice, however, was the discovery that this roofing material can be easily salvaged from inexpensive, used printing plates!

SHOP AROUND

A little research convinced me that the best print-shop "leftovers"—for shingle use, at least—were .009" thick and measured 24-5/8" X 36". Telephone calls to several local presses proved that such plates vary quite a bit in availability and in price. However, I finally located one small-job printer who had thousands of the shingles-to-be that he was more than willing to unload for the bargain price of 10¢ apiece!

So, I drove to his shop and carefully selected undamaged plates that had a sturdy, 1/8" doubled-over edge (created when the aluminum was locked in the press). In two hours, I had loaded 600 of the metal sheets in my truck . . . and had thoroughly blackened my clothes and gloves. (Printer's ink soils everything it touches, so always don old stained garments when you work with this recycled aluminum.)

CUT 'EM UP!

I soon determined that—if I cut the 2' X 3' plates into fourths—I could produce shingles that were attractive and strong enough to resist our Utah mountain winds. So I placed a single aluminum sheet-printed side up-on my work surface . . . measured carefully to determine the midpoint of each side . . . lined a yardstick up across the marks . . . and scratched in a "cross hair". I then used scissors to divide the plate up into four equal sections . . . and these rectangles became the patterns for the rest of my plates.

I found it easy to cut the sheets with my stout scissors. In fact, I was able to quarter 10 sheets in about 25 minutes . . . and the job could be done much more quickly with a paper cutter. (An even faster method would be to pay the print shop to "size" the plates with a power knife . . . but my pressman didn't have one of the tools on hand.)

A TEMPLATE AND TOOLS