I had mentioned sometime back that I had taken on a project hand riving shingles for a friend who has bought an 18th century house he is restoring. My shingles won't be on the house, but will go on the garage to make it look as old as the house. I had rived shingles long ago and never for a very large project like this. The roof in question will require about 12000 shingle to complete it. The toughest problem has been finding quality timber to use. It takes a near perfect tree of good size to be a board tree. I found seven on my farm. I've had to buy the rest. The logs on my place have been too large to snake out and so I've had to saw them into blocks on the sight and bring them to my "shingle camp" with a mule and sled. At any rate I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. (and learning a few things as i go!) I've heard my grandpa and other old timers from when I was a boy talk about making a thousand shingles a day. I've come to the conclusion that the timber they used was a huge asset to doing that kind of work. Good timber rives so much easier than barely acceptable timber. In those days (and before) it was likely every other tree was a board tree and in clearing land it was much easier to find timber that would rive. I'm dealing with second growth and in some cases third growth timber and it's little more knotty. The first days riving I managed 60 shingles. I'm now up to 300 a day and feel like it will continue to improve. Starting to think about projects on the farm that I might roof with some of my less than acceptable shingles, maybe a well box or a chicken house. A friend came out a couple of days ago and got some video footage of the process and then we took some more still images of me riving and a friend who had come over to help me who was splitting the logs into shingle bolts for me. Hopefully I can get some of the images on here before long.
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K.C. Fox says 2016-05-08 10:35:16 (CST)
I have watched a video of someone making shingles before, it was interesting to watch it would take some time to make enough to cover that roof but it will keep you busy for a while.I understand it took a special log to make shingles out of. enjoy making it yourself.
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
Ronnie Tucker says 2016-05-08 18:25:10 (CST)
you use to see a lot of tobacco sticks that were made with a froe. we still have several
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
JerryHicks says 2016-05-09 06:11:55 (CST)
I prefer the hand rived tobacco sticks to the sawed ones. Most of those I have are rived. They last longer. Right now I can buy them cheaper than I can make them though, with so many getting out of tobacco. I've had a neighbor ask me a few times if I'd ever make any just because he wants to see it done. I keep promising to rive out a few sticks for him sometime but have never gotten around to it. It doesn't take as good a tree to make sticks as it does to make shingles and I have plenty that would do for it.
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
Ralph in N.E.Oh says 2016-05-09 20:28:16 (CST)
Jerry, I watched a couple old men make shingles for a historical log cabin here in our county. It was the first time that I saw a froe used. It was a neat process to watch. It makes me wish I would have asked more questions...those old boys are gone now. The shingles they made however, look as good as the day they made them some twenty years ago!
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
hag says 2016-05-10 01:07:42 (CST)
I get my entire winter's kindlin just by having the kids gather up all of the broken tobacco sticks in the barns. 99.9% of them are sawmill sticks. The old hand made ones are very hard to break and are very handy to have when you're cattle become uncooperative too.
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
JerryHicks says 2016-05-10 06:20:44 (CST)
Every year when we strip tobacco I sort out the short sticks as well as the cracked and broken ones for kindling. It seems like for us too, that the waste ones are always the sawed sticks. I have thrown away a few of the rived ones because they were poorly rived though. Some of them are really too big for being any good and some that have too big a knot on them are thrown out as well. Around here people are picking them up for craft items and I've been wracking my brain to figure out if I could make anything out of mine. As to the shingle making, when the guy came and asked me to do it, he told me he couldn't find anyone who knew how. I told him my Grandpa had shown me how to do it when I was a boy and it seemed like every other old man around us had either rived shingles at one time or another or at least tobacco sticks. I couldn't believe he couldn't find anyone who didn't know how, then I said, "well, come to think of it, everyone I've ever heard talk about doing is dead, so you might be right." After word got out that I'm doing this order I've had two other places call and ask about having shingles made. So far I've determined I'm not charging enough, especially with the cost of timber. Around here I am competing with the stave mills who buy up the best oak to make whiskey barrels. They pay top price and set the value of the logs. Then you have to figure the time in a stack of shingles. It takes about 400 shingles to make a square (10ft X10ft) and with cutting the log to length, then splitting the rounds into bolts (a bolt makes 2 to 4 shingles) so that you get between 60 and 70 shingles per round, you have a lot of time in handling before you ever rive a shingle. If I split a half a day and rive half a day I can make about 250 shingles a day. Sawed shingles are cheaper and easier but they don't last as long. A good rived roof should last better than 70 years. I've been saving all my cull shingles to for a couple of well housings I plan to build this year and figure I'll cover the roofs with short shingles. In the mean time, I've decided riving shingles gives a fellow plenty of time to ponder his misdeeds in life! LOL
7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum
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