Cedar Shakes - A Lost Art

The lost art of installing cedar shakes.

Yes, these are beautiful roofs but there are not as many cedar shake roofs being installed like once before. The high cost of running a lumber mill and tree hungers tying up the harvesting of the forests to save the spotted owls and other animals may be the reason. The high fire hazards and requirements for fire retardants to be saturated into the cedar shakes surely adds costs to these roofs, but the main reason I think for the demise of this industry, is the life of a shake roof compared to other types of roofing available is very weak. The average history of most heavy shake roofs on a 4/12 pitch, is about 20 – 25 years, and mediums a few less. Heavies are 3/4 to 1 1/4 inch thick at the butt and a better-looking roof than mediums. This is far below the life of asphalt shingles and other products.

For years a cedar shake roof to me was the best roof out there. The beautiful look and the smell of cedar permeating the home was the best. The first roof I did was a medium shake roof in Folsom California in 1971. Back then we hand nailed all our roofs using # 5 E G nails and stripper, shown to the right. Roofers this day use pneumatic fasteners to install roofs for more production, and some roofers today have never even seen a nail stripper. The craftmanship of using a shingler’s ax and hand nailing was an art and not many roofers do it anymore. Some shinglers could and some still actually do what is called stick nailing. As each nail is struck the next nail is set by hand in the wood shake by the vibration of the previous nail being driven.

This would stand that nail straight up and ready and waiting to be struck. The shingler would drive each nail with one swing of the hammer/ax, and so on, and so on. You can see the little doors on the stripper, where 12 – 15 nails would slide out all in a row for nailing. In some cases, a good shingler is as fast as any pneumatic nailer could be, except for having to reach up and grab more nails out of this small tin box.

Cutting valley’s and weaving in and out hips was truly an art. When the final ridge cap was installed and you looked back at those straight courses and perfect hips made me proud to be a roofer.

With the fire hazards, the cedar shakes roof began slowing down in the eighties then restrictions came to California and other states in the mid-nineties it just about killed the industry. My last large job was in 2003 when I finished up an HOA that was 1,100 sqs. next to Sierra View Golf Course in Roseville CA. I hate seeing this type of roofing and the roofers that know how to install them correctly slowly going away since it has been so important to myself and my family, but there are great new products out there now with great warranties. Hopefully, there are still a few more years left that these shakes will be still needed.

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