Making Redwood Shakes

I learned how to make redwood shakes yesterday. It is fun. It only works using straight tight grained old growth wood, so it is mostly a lost artform. Here they harvest off old stumps. The first loggers left tall stumps since it was easier for them to cut trees higher up. Darryl cut up a few sections of a stump to be made into shakes for the pump house roof, then showed us how to make them. Steph and I tried, I took pictures of her so people can see how it is done. You use a froe and a sledge hammer and split across the grain. First you position the froe a shake's distance from the edge of the large piece of wood, then you hammer it down a bit, it is quite easy, then you pull the handle of the froe back towards you, or away, to split it farther and as needed push the froe down more. With really good wood the shake should pop off with little effort. If there are knots or twisted grain, or rotten parts the shakes don't split even and may have holes or break off before they split the length of the piece of wood.

They are easy and fun to make. It feels to me like asking the wood to do something it feels comfortable doing and it agreeing to do it, or not. So it is easy. You are not forcing it to do something, like if you try to cut a piece of wood, where you need do all the work. Shakes are also more rot resistant because the grains of the wood are not broken but brake along natural lines, between fibers so to speak.

(Shingles are used like shakes but are cut from wood instead of split so can be made from less high quality wood.)