Wooden Shingle (shake) Making

Hi All, It's been a little while but I hope to get back into blogging again now.

Over the last few months I have been reading up on shingle (shake) making and giving it ago to cover the woodshed roof. Shingles are wooden tiles, they are normally called shingles if they are sawn or sometimes shakes if they are split.

I read up on the traditional technique in Ben Law's new woodland craft book and also found a couple of great educational videos on youtube, here are the best two I could find. Many thanks to these people for sharing, I learn so much from youtube.

So you need to make a 'brake' to help split the shingles off how you want them. Here are the pics of my process for making this:

 and here is me and my Dad, starting to make them in the spring sunshine!

and we were very lucky today with mum making us all some lunch!

Note the wild garlic addition, picked from about 20 metres away

So far we have made about 150, and its taken a couple of days, I think we need 2000 so it's going to be a long job, but it's a great way to spend your days, so it's all good :)