Make Your Own Shingles
With just a mallet, a froe and a few other tools, you can craft wooden shakes for your roof.
February/March 2005
By Robert Simonson
Have you ever admired an old house covered with weathered shakes — those long shingles old-timers split from logs? Well, if you’re reasonably good with tools, you can make the same kind of roofing for your own buildings.
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Turning out handmade shakes isn’t difficult — the hard part is finding the right material. As the illustrations show, shakes are cut from blocks of wood (shake bolts) split out of a whole trunk of cedar, sugar pine, redwood, fir or other straight-grained timber.
Not all trees that look straight from the outside actually prove to be so when they’re opened up, however, and you may have to test chunks sawed off a number of trees before you find a trunk that splits well.
Obviously, you should limit this potentially wasteful search to timber that is already down or dead.
When my wife and I need shake material, we go around to areas that have just been logged and ask the crews if we can clean up a little of the mess they’ve left. Usually, the answer is an enthusiastic “yes.” Alternatively, a permit to cut wood in a national forest will get you all the bolts you need.
The tools needed to get shake bolts out of a whole tree are a chain saw (or a two-person crosscut saw), two to three wedges, a small sledgehammer and an axe. After you’ve cut off a 24- to 36-inch length of timber, you stand it on end, tap a straight line across the diameter with a wedge and hammer, and split the chunk in half. Then split off a narrow triangular section from one of the halves and remove the center of the section so the remaining piece — measured at right angles to the rings — matches the width you want for your shingles.
Figure 1 shows the tools you’ll need to split the shakes from the bolts: a froe (a metal wedge 8 inches to 12 inches long, with an “eye” in one end to hold a handle) and a wooden mallet (made of hardwood, with a knot for strength). Froes can sometimes be found in secondhand stores, or ask almost any old farmer — there’s likely one of these outmoded tools lying around.
In a pinch, a froe can be made from a section of a leaf-type automobile spring. Cut the metal, heat it and curl one end in a circle 1 inch to 1½ inches in diameter to take the handle. Sharpen the edge, and you have a shake-making tool.
Try splitting the sample hunk into shakes. If the wood is unsuitable, you’ll have to go on to another log ... but if you’re lucky, the test bolt will split into smooth shingles one-quarter to five-eighths of an inch thick. In that case, go ahead and divide the section into shakes.
