Making Wood Roof Shingles

Lay down a layer of shingles with a second layer over the top until the shingles meet at a single straight peak.

Making wood roof shingles.

How to make your own shingles. Each eight foot piece will be cut into thirds lengthwise. Keep your eyes on the tree as it falls and move quickly out of the way. Pa mac demonstrates how to make wood shingles otherwise known as wood shakes for roofing material to go on his new log chicken house.

We found this to be the largest manageable size to work with. Cut until the tree starts to lean and fall. Now remove the bark from the wood and split into thin sheets. Make a template piece that will be used to mark all the others out with.

Prep a wood shingle roof for reroofing a synthetic mesh underlayment allows continuous airflow between the roof deck and the shingles. Make sure all shingles on each side are covered. Turning out handmade wooden shingles isn t difficult in itself the hard part is finding the right material. Cover all of the nail heads with roofing cement.

Of course since only the heartwood has any decay resistance of note and sapwood is more prevalent today with smaller logs most shingles or shakes used for roofing are treated to resist decay and may be fire retardant treated as. Cover the length of the cedar shingle roof peak that the new layers of shingles have made. Shingles are cut from blocks of wood shake bolts split out of a whole trunk of cedar. Then use a mallet to split them out further.

Start off with round oak wood then split it with a splitting axe. Once you get halfway through the tree then start at a downward angle above your original cut. If an old roof was once covered with wood shingles or shakes they were likely nailed to skip sheathing which consists of widely spaced 1 in. As the shingle or the sawn shake use less wood they are financially preferred for large areas such as roofs today.

In this video we learn how to make wood roof shingles by hand. One side will be straight and one side will be wavy. Make sure to use clean and straight grained oak to do this.