Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Rounding the corner. The slate on this side was in bad shape due to the sun exposure. The pine decking is hard as a rock, and it looks like I'll be using stainless steel nails instead of the usual copper.

6 comments:

Seth said...

Looking nice!

Why the switch to stainless nails?

American Foursquare Restoration said...

Thanks Seth.

The copper will bend more easily when nailing into this wood.

Seth said...

Ah, yes, very good point.

It's exciting to see the work you're doing with the slate.

American Foursquare Restoration said...

Thanks. It's a never ending project, but I really do like working with slate.

I'm coming up with some plans right now to build some slate bird & bat houses, with some of the extra slate I have around.

Should be a fun project.

Seth said...

Ah, yes, I can imagine soft nails are a pain to drive in that hard pine. I wonder what they did back in the day? I can't imagine they pre-drilled everything.

Unknown said...

The nails they used were steel.

They will rust when there is a leak, otherwise they're fine for the life of the roof. In fact there were many nails off of this roof that were still in pretty good condition.

That's why you will sometimes see a line of slates sliding down out of place. If you have a slate missing on an old roof, it's a good idea not to wait too long to fix.

The pine used was likely fresh as well, and not as hard.