Making Roof Shingles With Hand Tools

hi well today we're going to be making some shingles and just like on the farm behind me in fact they're going to be used on our cooking room which is at the side and one of my friends has pretty good experience making shingles he covered that whole barn roof so he's going to show us how it's done his name's John here goes hi John you've very kindly showing us about shingles and how they've made well here's an example them Harry the two and a half thousand on this side of this Wow I myself am the smartest and it does look beautiful that you come across here the field here and you see the barn well this is a hand motion with this side and sometimes called shakes I think they are originally both called shingles and shakes but it's in America they seem to refer to their made ones as shakes and the psalm one with the shingles I handmade you mean Debian cleft out of a beautiful process we're about yeah yeah you're not this single machine hiding around the corner no but there's a wood Weiser down the road and I will show you the ones we saw that have been sawn on the other side if we look up to the left hand side that's where I first started off with okay so come on toes would you see they're quite twisted yeah yeah is that a problem or does it such that they still work yeah but this was the twist natural twist in the chestnut itself and though there are any big pieces of chestnut we had available initially and then I saw some bigger stuff from everything it's come from the wood here the whole barn is chestnut so how long ago were these done would you know I started about ten years ago yeah so they've been on yeah ten years yeah that's not bad at it was they're looking pretty good still you've got a lovely undulation what they say is the life of the shingles pennants on the pitch of the roof well it's great to pitch the more we'll throw the water off but I'm not a church steeple it's I do you an answer though they got a they say around about thirty years I've heard 40 years as well but 3040 years they're laid on a gauge of one so these shingles are cut to 15 inches and they've got about a four and a half inch gauge on it so they're three cover at any one point of time i could reduce charge that's a lot isn't it yeah I saw order schemes I'm thinking about it coming over and I was thinking I wonder if it's you know like 50% coverage or but it's free free layer wood which is yeah we use pine on a traditional clay tile yeah what a friend of ours and a florist in London so the stuff they've dug up there most of them were 18 inches well I don't know the reason for it but I can only assume once you get above 18 try to split them down yeah it's very difficult but 15 I find works and it's getting straight sections frankly if you had smaller sections of wood you probably fight a saw some more straighter stuff you can and I'm going to show you can work the twist out of it but there's only so much you can go and if you come around the other side the barn these are so on to the same size but sawn all a wood-mizer and you see a lot flatter I don't like them as much actually no they're not so in fencing are Dejah seeing them there but the the interesting thing about the tingled ways that the handmade one is meant to be more durable because you're basically pulling apart the cells and north of the wood you know cutting through them and inside we've got a very good example of that to the right hand side over here you can see that we basically got no hardly any timing at all from an outage of participants or any other on the sawn buttons yeah now if we look to this side oh yeah I'm on the other way Oh golly the difference and you see yeah now that's not it looks like it's damp it's not damn that's just a little bit of moisture getting in and drying out and pulling the tannins through and staying in the timber it's quite unlike master than do the whole of this side we've seen that now I saw the poster song size but it does so it's all divorces basically getting through not very long yeah it is the more damp is getting into the shingle yeah then as it dries out it's pulling those turnings through but yeah ain't it they look at it they're soaking wet they've actually bone-dry yeah yeah you know what it does indicate is that the life of the the hair matching or the one that's cleft is going to be a lot longer I think this is a classic desirable and in fact this side was put up before that's all very good in time actually six months yeah that's about the optimum size Somerville a little bit bigger but you can see to get radially to get that size you need double and a bit more so you're going to need about fourteen inches quite a bit cross section fourteen inches right yeah yeah okay it ended hospital items size got more difficulty working yeah though but it's not so bad but I mean the other interesting thing is there you can feel which way the grains going if you can and you can't always do it laying them with a grain running down yeah because of that also see the sales of the timber are facing in that direction yeah I'll just run over more the other thing very important thing while we're talking about laying shingles is a lot of people make a mistake of putting the nails through at the top edge now she always get quite light that's the reason they were used on church steeples etc if they just put on the top edge the wind gets under them it acts like a hinge all right yeah yeah so what you actually do is there's a single below it you actually put second batten down about there yeah that makes sense yeah yeah it's up alright yeah okay then it's covered with one above it but the fact that both from the batten below mean that it's wedged a lot of that didn't you it's not tea in the ice yeah so a lot of people make that mistake a koala wave here whizzing away at the back right the two logs we're going to work on today is this one which is a little bit smaller I would like and we will cut this round regularly in Wicked's okay like geez and this one a smaller one over here we've cut laterally across the two different methods under them but it what it does mean this method you can use smaller logs but that the shingle itself is less stable and the reason for that is this if we come on this all yeah here we have a log where we even see the cracks occurring and the reason is crack sir a radiating out in this way is the log wants to shrink more in this direction yes it does that direction so attention is there showing itself in there in these radial cracks but what that does mean is if you can get your shingle from this wedge here yeah we've got straight grain going across the shingle it won't shrink much in this way at all it'll shrink a little bit in this way with that really doesn't matter what you fit on the roof but more importantly it won't move now if we come over to this one if we cut raid a laterally across which we're going to do yeah these rings want to straight down yeah they watch straight now so they will start to come yeah they won't this be stable because photo we made these they're fine but there's a tendency for them to move a little bit more not a great deal so what you tend to do is you need to leave these for a while before you lay them and possibly go back to them and just trim them up a little bit if you want ya become but that's a - oh yeah so we'll start with the first one the radial radio right and what I do is I take thoughts it's expensive people equipment you have here John and all energy yes we basically there is a buyout Galena tube I take it a bicycle in each area a size yep some the bigger logs they might be a little bit tough together over it a little bit small what I sometimes do is I put a piece of wood or something all right now like that this is stretch it a bit more yeah and then we've got to put in the first cut so our weapon of choice here terribly tough road we can see there's a little crack there let's use it and should pro wise John just standard Pro this is a standard this is grandfather oh yeah only standard yeah nicely tailored that's what you're looking for a nicely tapered fro this one which I also use is maple oak a spring oh yeah yeah and you can see yeah it's only sharpened on the edge but this has a property which we didn't realize it had before is that if we want to split down and I'll show you later the shingle by cutting down yeah like so knocking it down like so it doesn't slip up the handle the spring seems to people rebuy tin onto it and it this hasn't moved in five years so I've been using the only federal for you whereas a traditional throw it just slides back up there and catches your fingers so that's why I use that one anyway the first cut if you can try and do it in one like the way across you're going to clean join yeah sometimes you have to use wedges you never know what's in the log until you want it up no I like to hit their first I hit their because if you go in at slight angle it acts like a weird size yeah yeah we go with the air see this is the sort of thing and it goes through this is what you pick up when you've done $2,000 yeah now that what you I always do at this stage is held him see nicely with the bed and it is open yeah yeah if you see now I can look down there and if you show the camera down looks nice it's fairly straight a little bit of a twist not much to wire out so we know this is a good log which we can do quite nicely now making this type of shingle what's important is if you started make a single that little bit yeah it would taper off so you always go half half half so the next up is there and it's through yeah the next cut is half of that so when was this log cut if you see how green is that wood at this great this you can this was cut about six months ago okay you can cut up up to a couple of years you can really use them and moisture stays in the wood dry up on the edges okay so there's no real thing is I turned with the chestnut cause it's durable leave it laying in the wood if it's come down for any reason whatever okay or if I've sourced it leave it in the shade you know it doesn't dry out too much yeah is it worth cutting trimming off the ends because they tend to gain grain dries out and have a little skew splits in it yeah yeah so again we now we go half and then we go half a game right and reason we're going far far far is we've got equal pressure on cut yeah yeah eating the cuts yeah yeah that makes sense we good with about half an inch so we can do these two and then it's starting to stick a little bit and I should pull it apart like so and then this one as well now these are over half an inch and this is where a big illogical advantage but now that I've got to do if they right what why me from that so I take my best part the shingle in half at this point okay in half at this point yeah and then come down like so I don't that part going to be waste that will probably be waste yeah yeah bit we're keeping we're the bigger with a bigger log you wouldn't have that waste but the important thing now is to do exactly the same with its adjoining one yeah like so yeah if you don't do it in this method when it comes to actually splitting the mail you'll probably find that at the moment it's going to taper in that direction which would mean you have a little bit more width at the bottom which you can trim yes if you had gone too far in that direction it would take her out on your bigger piece yeah and it would be wasted so that is the plan on in the quarter so if you look at that that's what you're looking you know cheer that's looking good because that's suddenly looking like that roofed absolutely you know it's so we get working come round here this this is a relatively small vlog for dry long lilies but you know it's what you can get in yeah and used yeah and then I'll do a game with it snow yeah that's really nice that's that one so we see in this one eight we've got one two three four or yeah we're going to waste a few so I learn about 30 along this nice that's a lot now when we get back although that's not too much more we won't get anywhere near as that one on that one no get some bigger ones it's actually quite a nice to the size very optimal so I'll quickly go for our now the owner goes inside it's rising that you've done that you know without rushing but you've done that quite quickly really I mean it's probably you know I mean it it's a nice nice log to slip could could have done with being a bit bigger the log itself but the overall it's it's not too bad at all we were so later yeah right there's the log finished now ready to be taken down so the next thing we do is take the band off take that out there and it's very it's going to explode out well and I'm demonstrating this oh well so it's my Terry's chocolate orange yeah yeah where all the little signals fall apart it's a good log it will fall apart you don't often know but here we go really one not there look at what the rest of them are coming out in quite nice waves different sizes of this now here's an example of where I use that we have the log yeah a slight twist in it okay so what here's an example where I use this just to take off and this is what I mean about when I split the smaller section this now wants to taper off so quite is putting this far approve you see how that tapers off yeah yeah which leaves me a chunky pea fear but gives you something to work with the axe there's a basic channel that we're going to make we've got Paul there I recommend 30 yeah yeah you'll see so the next thing we do is use yaks and here we have X now with chestnut has a very small amount of SAP wood that little white section there is its SAP wood now that needs to come off so just that's at the outer edge yeah sometimes it's more pronounced but on this particular tree which is slow growing it's very small yeah and I think the tree was in decline when it was spelled so if you didn't take a healthy would just go so if the rock yeah basically that's taking all the sugars of the tree up and down about yeah the insects and fungus will attack okay this contains all the tannins which is durable yeah yeah so this is a side axe yeah yeah you can use another axe but I use a side axe much easier much better as a method I use in a second-- which you can't really use with another axe you using isn't this funny a right handling better side pebblepad sorry that's right Appl people can trim these down this way yeah right so going easier with a side axe but you can do that with an awl reacts but the first thing to do is take this little bit of Sakharov you can see the little white line there so what I'm doing first of all is I just taken a top it off yeah and then I'm coming down the side and taking CBI home taking that off in a straight line now what's inside with humans is the straight edges because they've got to puff up to each other and so there we have taken off of the act yeah that's lovely that's lovely and straight if someone didn't have a signed out you can still do it but it's much more deployed okay yeah I don't know with smaller axes yeah next thing is there's the wedge shape oh yeah and it's too thin the same so you take a what is a sensible thickness probably about there you're looking to achieve about half-inch saw and shingles a much thinner than that that's fine it's all if that down so I take that away and now this is a trick is the two pieces parallel so they parallel would strike the white line is like down downloads you can see we kept them yeah now the next problem you have is you've got a little bit of a bolt on that side so I stand the shingle up like so yeah and I say where is my straightest plane well to me I need to take some off there and a very small amount there okay so I start with the front now this method is you have to be careful with this method I know what you're doing this is the way that people will hue beams it's the same way so four would be to do that but I find this is quick and efficient in producing or is it just will knife in in a minute to tidy it up okay but if you look at that your hand was splayed away so I'm not catching my fingers I will not lift the blade up above the top and my hand is at this end okay and then what I'm doing is hewing this like it would it be yeah and I can come down to the center point and get that nice and straight yeah let's wrap it isn't it and then I take my hair to the funk and just finish that off down there perfect I know it's there we've got a feet sticking out as well so we turn that round hand at the front okay look at the braid it's not coming up more than two-thirds up you know so you need to smooth found amount of effort to do it I'll just trim that little bit up there you go look we've got quite a nice way to set isn't it yeah and it's a bearded side axe so for small work I can get my fingers right up there and literally and actually control oh yeah yoga hang sort of protected behind a bit it is that's wrong it yeah right so effectively we have these two which we can then put on the say about thirty there but we're going put these onto the draw knife now quickly okay yep this is a traditional English a horse from the single perspective it's got a nice flat I said to work on and what I do is basically follow this down you can see where the rock is and where we've got a straight head here so by pushing it under here I can see roughly any high so I can see there's a high spot there I'm using bevel up I finally get more control with a parallax I'll see what I'm doing you even take finer shavings off if you want and basically I take it through in that tire just tighten that up slightly then around this side you can see the rough bit of the unlikelihood likely proved that is where we've torn out the image there is the idea behind it the part that you're making it practice there live properly it also to stop watering that's because I'm lucky because it Lipsitz will stop any water just laying in those little gaps or whatever so it tightens it up it lays flatter it's well worth doing yeah particularly as you've got a wedge right now but you can see by taking the top edge of the wedge spot yes you can even more utiful yes and get more unity yeah yeah turn it around that way so quite quickly as the pershing well now if we look at that that's a little bit of twist but not much it's fairly uniform in size yeah and that that will a perfectly flat on the roof of our difficulties okay in terms of you know yeah you can always trim them up afterwards if you really need to you need to so really good all from when I go and laying them on the roof I'd want the small axe you just print assume yeah yeah so the next type of cut we're going to do is lateral cut across a smaller log okay well this is a smaller log we're going to do lateral singles or through and through okay and it should mean this is too loose so I'm going to try and get it round three times what this does as well as it helps apply pressure around along yeah so look as when you're working on a cleaving break you're looking all the time so keep the pressure equal to control the split I wonder what was the cool of choice to doing a bit of leather strapping in years gone by I'm not sure now it's a torniquet I suppose the stream leaving well abused just a break to do it yeah a little bit to you know mix it's a sense yeah well done yes say what you can do is just cut the inner tube until out frankly not easier yeah yeah you need it a little way down not too near the top otherwise think that cuz it soon be it makes it much more difficult for ya basically split open I'm pulling this down a bit that I probably do right so the same process the bigger fro now first cut so I'm hitting on that edge there yeah widget more less she goes through and we have a locked it's not very nice log there's no point in carrying on anything as you're saying it's the same idea you work from the silver like the thickest bit coming out yeah that's slightly different in that you've got to keep equal pressure so yeah I'm looking down while this a little bit more twist on it if you can see that yeah yeah and so we'll see how we go on this not going to be quite food now we go to the same principle where you've got to say to yourself is the bulk of the wood tapers away here yeah and we get that the Rings there that are very pronounced yeah obviously there's that piece of wood is too thin for anything yes so that ideally is the last cut yes so we the next cut is going to be there yeah which is halfway between that one and one okay that cut is going to be here okay now again with that bulk on that volume of will be got more or less the same so hopefully it should not pay for the kite should go down particularly with the band on white smoothly and it has gone quite well for me yep it's going quite well yeah now what we would then normally do is take we can then take this half to there yep and this will properly taper may not do but it's going to be the waste a bit early yeah squeezes tapered a bit but we've added it so this one now is the one we're working on now you've got a take a view here can I get four out of that and I get to what it's a bit chunky of it too I feel it would it be a little bit bigger and what we then we get four out of this and you wouldn't attend free for the same reason that you wouldn't bend your cutting no because one will taper out and you always certainly won't get it that problem that's not and this is the other ways and that's not this is a more difficult log that's not splitted open so we're having to knock the flow out here and we're going to have to use the other fro to split it down at the end yeah and okay and then where you see we're not going to get as many shins no no yes about 16 if my masters actually now working well is it slightly differently because it's two Center ones okay you you want taking half because you it's too close to the people that yep yep 24 I that so this one will have to take the cross here yeah and so you end up with that so yes okay but these weren't all run as smoothly as they did on the radial cart no and they're not because you're not cutting with the grain it's you you're splitting across the bar that's one in the running down so well and that's these all the differences between doing it this way and not a lot of people take these out and then split them on a premium break maybe they can yeah doing it this method you shouldn't really need to so here is you same again yes you're lining up to that line I do it same thickness we get same thickness over here oh yeah the really the main reason for using this method over the other is the fact that if you got narrower diameter you've what got access yeah decent size yeah this is a method you can use yeah so still position is quite exceptional yeah without have a massive butts to work on and just not the grows to 14 inches okay we get more of it nowadays because so much of it is over stood but it is still you know it's difficult to get for and I just hard smooth it out a little bit but again you see that's what guards know so what I will see when we open this tube and all this and how it works flat the car like the other one well Harry there's all the fluid for Tots excellent nice layer them they haven't split that well so they're going to be a little bit difficult to sort of convert but we'll see how we go on it and it is quite a drama bit of what's this one this is a little bit try and you feel like it a bit green or as a say I think that the very fact that the set would was sort of merging I think that we created was on decline and is about to potentially die anyway it was an old coffee store and they get water India's bottom they water and that's one of the reasons I failed it but I can tell on the outside it is drying out very quickly it's still quite a bit of moisture inside we're so looking at this now one or two of them is split that's rubbish is what those that's rubbish right we do that would be so work those are what we've got what's very noticeable is the called split I've gone fairly well yeah are trying to split after that and you see that little knot there yes yeah that's what's been making a life difficult a bit more bit more than her mature there so and I'm not we do nearly all in what we do is we take these one at a time and we start with the central ones on this one here you can see that twist in that yeah we then get this other frozen I've been talking about again half now and we will knock that down and this is where this phone comes with it to its own because this doesn't move on me and I can basically do that and it's a reason is aren't shifting are now this spring space you're taking the shopping coming back again and these class Springs rates and like that but they need to be more tapered to be effective as a phone really yeah but for this exercise excellent now there we have another one here and again I'll just click nucleus yes if we've done this radial it's going to split a lot easier but we wouldn't have had the size you need so there we are going on this and it's what about this equal pressure so even though what we've got here you see is X gone out yes he healthy is yeah and unfortunately it's put it in a few months that's what out too much and the reason if we look at the twist on it so that not yeah they're not is are not surprising so Eve on this one we won't even mess around with that not we take it from there yeah it's quite near the pit anyway so we would have cut this in half come what may I was doing very good shingle absolutely so here you do that yeah and that's quite a big not compute now we can probably make something out of that if we can we've got enough to get the knot out but you can see the bend on that yeah I could do something out of that yeah so we see how we go well we're left with now if not bad it's not bad we've got a lot of twisting wine here so really we're doing exactly the same exercises before so first of all start at the bottom just go into the edge of that SAP wood you can see the line the you can I say oh yeah and then we go down as straight as we can sometimes not easy to go straight the logs all royal place and if it rains all over the place what someone and then this side again what I'm going to do with this is I'm going to take some of the volume out so I'm holding that there and there I think that's the widen that's got to go first so we're going to take that little bit out there yeah and we've got some just an end not much the game things technique idea and then we turn it round and we look and that's not too bad for there and we've always done that there and once what I happen now in fact completely over well and the going it's difficult so on this why it's going to be I think needs more off there there's a bit more testing piece isn't it I see that some of them are going to be easier enables to sort out get this size of a single thing if you use a draw like this or this so that's that's pretty good for more rest right there so yeah we need to take this angles here just chopping blocks in a bit war on an another youth now and so you have a nice straight that it actually comes away a lot easier yeah so then I do you mean about the axis it is quicker than probably more efficient as a ball can move along too accurate with it as you are we're a bit near the piste there there's a little bit of rubbish so it's pretty straight at the moment so I want to take that little bit out there and looking down it and see we can get those straight possible yeah excellent it's a little bit wider down the bottom there it is better yeah you know it's not too bad now if you have a look there yeah so this is the extra work you have to do with this method but you're using smaller logs so if we take that now for draw and I see you and then we can compare one with the other exactly the same principle yeah a little bit of ruffle which told to the gray more that's well worth you will see there the roughness of it yes you move it up as possible okay it's really bad go over top on it just get what you can off because shakes and fire back edge under the other tiles that speed I can expose - you keep this need a bit more drawn or pushing through the shot of users obviously so it's quite nice wide yes 100 a nice angle another shingle if we look at that now from what it was yeah he's great right into the nice daylight and we can compare the two there's a larger one but the other one we had the difference in grain as well see the way that this runs yes the grain runs differently so you can tell straight away you see that two different sizes there by that's why I go for 15-inch yeah I use a gauge of four half inch so a little bit of tolerance and you can trim when you're up there if you like like white like it rusty so that's a difference in terms of madness they're fine they back up reasonably well and the other way around yeah so there we are absolutely that's made across and that's made radially good okay external hold on and going so much for showing it might be on opioids watching John and seeing how the shingles are made and thanks so much for watching we'll try and put a film up sometime of laying some of the shingles so you can see how that's done as well okay bye bye for now

Channel: Harry Rogers

Views: 5,040,793

Rating: 4.4932256 out of 5

Keywords: shingles, shakes, roofing, roof shingles, froe, side axe, making shingles, primitive roof, chestnut shingles, oak shingles, medieval roof, viking roof, primitive technology, woodland building, carpentry, woodwork, how to make shingles

Id: UZA1J8RHltY

Length: 36min 35sec (2195 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SmartToes]

Follow-up: Laying Traditional Wooden Shingles

I couldn't figure out what the annoying whistling sound was, until I recognized what every Englishman knows instinctually: teatime.

[u/LindseyLee5]

Wow, that was really interesting! Thank you for sharing

[u/Thunderb1rd02]

The guy with the camera needs to talk less.

[u/OneToeInTheCesspool]

That was very very satisfying. Between the accents, the outdoor setting, and the hand tools I've gotten my hobbit fix for the day, too.

[u/bugo]

Are they hot?

[u/the_drew]

The roof of one of my out-buildings needs replacing, I was thinking of doing it with that horrible tar-roll. This has inspired me to go a different way, thank you.