Handsplit Shake

A handsplit shake is a wooden roofing unit whose exposed face has been split along the natural grain of the wood rather than sawn. The split surface is rough and irregular, giving shake roofs their rugged texture and deep shadows.

Traditional method

Historically, shakes and shingles were split entirely by hand. A splitter drove a froe, a blade with a handle at right angles, into a short block (bolt) of straight-grained, knot-free wood with a wooden mallet, levering off one piece at a time. To produce a taper, the splitter flipped the block end-for-end between each split. Hand-split pieces were often dressed with a drawknife so they would lie flat on the roof.

Modern variants

• Handsplit and resawn: a thick split blank is passed diagonally through a band saw, producing two shakes, each with a split face and a sawn back. This is the most common modern type.
• Tapersplit: split on both faces, with the taper produced by turning the block between splits.
• Straight-split: split on both faces without a taper, so the unit is the same thickness throughout.

In North America these are certified under the Cedar Shake & Shingle Bureau's Certi-Split label.

Characteristics

Because splitting follows the grain, the fibres are continuous through the shake. This makes handsplit shakes strong, less prone to warping and better at shedding water along their surface than units sawn across the grain. The irregular faces, however, leave gaps between courses, so felt interlay is normally used under shakes to keep out wind-driven rain and snow.

Heritage

Hand-riven shakes and shingles are used in the conservation of historic timber buildings in North America and Europe, where heritage guidance often favours reproducing the original splitting technique and species.