THE ESOTERIC ART OF SPLITTING AND FITTINGS

Image Gallery Reroofing the Gott cabinis a job for the entire family

Hand-split "shakes" are unmatched for beauty.

By David Petersen

Near as Peter Gott can recollect, he's split some 15,000 shingles over the past quarter of a century. Appalachia's master hewn-log craftsman used the most recent batch of 4,300 in the fall of '85 to replace the original 23-year-old cedar shingle roofs on the Gott family cabin and outbuildings in Cowbell Holler, which is just a piece off Tater Gap Road in the Smoky Mountain foothills of western North Carolina.

And as Peter proved to me—among the least crafty of wood craftsmen—anyone who owns a few inexpensive hand tools and a good measure of patience can learn to split (or rive, to use the appropriate lingo) beautiful wood shingles.

When calculating the number of shingles required for a roofing job, Gott figures 400 standard-sized shingles (3 1/2" to 9" wide by 19" long) per square (100 square feet) of roof to be covered. While a novice would have to hustle to rive even a few dozen usable shingles in a day, Peter can turn out several hundred in the same period of time.

Here's how it's done:

First you need a tree—or maybe several trees, depending on the number of shingles required and the diameter of the tree. If you live in or near the eastern hardwood forests, just about any variety of oak will suffice-, Peter uses red oak because it's both plentiful and easy to split (though less durable than white oak). Out west, most varieties of pine and some firs are suitable for shingles, but these softwoods should be treated with a low-toxicity, nonflammable wood preservative to forestall rotting.

Whatever variety you decide to use, the tree should be free-of knots, true of trunk, straight-grained (as opposed to twisted) and at least 24" in diameter. After felling the tree, saw the trunk into round sections (shingle blocks) 19" long, being careful to cut straight across rather than at angles. Roll or haul the blocks to the work area and stand them on end for splitting. (Yes, you rive shingles from green wood.)

SHINGLE SPLITTING STEP BY STEP

Splitting, or "riving," shingles isn't as difficult as you might imagine. Master craftsman Peter Gott can hand-split them from red oak as fast as his wife, Polly, can nail them in place. Of course, you won't pick up that kind of speed without a good bit of practice. The instructions provided here should get you started.