CHAPTER XVII 

 SHINGLES AND SHAKES 



HISTORY 



SHINGLES have been used from the earliest historical times to protect 

 buildings from the weather both as roofing and as siding. Up to com- 

 paratively recent times they had been made by the slow process of hand 

 work. The logs were cut into bolts, hand rived with a frow or broadaxe 

 and the shingles were shaved with a drawing knife. Sometimes a "shav- 

 ing horse " was used in early colonial times. A man who could rive 500 

 shingles in a day was considered an expert worker. 



Until a few decades ago, white pine, chestnut and southern white 

 cedar were relied upon for the major portion of shingles used in this 

 country. The rustic shingle maker was often able to tell from the general 

 appearance of the tree whether it would rive properly or not. Fre- 

 quently, however, a large block was cut out of the side of the large virgin 

 white pine trees to test their splitting qualities. If the wood did not 

 split well the tree was left a prey to the next forest fire, which quickly 

 ignited the resin which had exuded from the exposed portion. This 

 pioneer custom was very wasteful, since only the butt log was used for 

 shingles and very frequently a tree that would now produce 30x20 shingles 

 was made to produce only about 500 shingles. 



Hand-made shingles were generally of two kinds, known as " joint " 

 and " lap." The latter were longer with one edge thicker than the other 

 and nailed on the roof so that the edge of one lapped over the edge of the 

 other like weather boards. The " joints " were nailed edge to edge like 

 sawed shingles. Hand-made shingles called " shakes " are still made 

 from sugar pine and redwood in California and will be discussed later 

 in this chapter. 



The introduction of shingle machinery proved to be a great economy 

 in saving the available raw material. With the shingle saws, shingles 

 which included knots, cross grain, etc., could be made not only from butt 

 logs of the best trees, but from the tops and partially decayed butts. 



351 



