Clapboard maker

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Clapboard maker with clapboard knife in Safien Platz

Shingle makers is a profession , which refers to the woodworking of shingles has specialized. Today it is only rarely practiced and is therefore one of the professions that are dying out.

history

Already in pre-antiquity, slightly inclined roof trusses (tattsch roofs) were laid out like shingles with wooden shingles so that water could not penetrate the house. The wooden shingles were initially only weighted down with slats and stones. From the 17th century, the roofs were made steeper, which made it necessary to fasten the wooden shingles with nails. The first houses with a nailed roof were often called “nail roofs”.

The roofs of the houses in the Alps, the foothills of the Alps and in the Black Forest in particular were covered with wooden shingles. They can withstand heavy snow loads, are durable and cheap because the wood grows in front of the door. A handmade clapboard will last 80-100 years. In time it has to isolate and protect. She'll turn gray in a year. Originally, the farmers built their houses and stables independently or with the help of farmers who did clapboard as a sideline. The major disadvantage of shingles is that they are easily ignitable. Devastating village fires ( fire of Glarus in 1861), for example, led to a ban on wooden shingle roofs on new buildings in the canton of Graubünden in 1872, which was only lifted in 1983 for exceptional cases. In the 1950s, interest in clapboard subsided.

Today clapboard making is experiencing a certain renaissance . Bridge, monastery and church roofs are covered with small shingles. Shingles are particularly suitable for moving shapes and for modern architecture. In 2004, the Safier Ställe association was founded in Graubünden's Safiental to save the Safier economic buildings with new wooden shingle roofs. This also revived the craft by relearning it from experienced old people.

The Chesa Futura in St. Moritz by the English architect Sir Norman Fosters is covered with 250,000 hand-made shingles by the shingle makers Patrick and Heidi Stäger from Untervaz . Seven people worked for a whole year and used 300-year-old larches from the Lower Engadine.

Operation

Shingle roof model
Façade painting with motifs from shingle production, Rapold in Bad Reichenhall

The clapboard maker must observe four rules: cut the right wood, from the right place and at the right time, and process it correctly.

In the Safiental, spruce wood from 150 to 200 year old slowly growing spruce is used. If available in the area, slow-growing, fine-grained larch is also an option , where the annual rings are as close together as possible. The wood must come from the immediate vicinity, because experience shows that wood from the region is adapted to the (alpine) climate and local weather conditions and that the shingle roofs made of this wood last much longer.

The wood is felled by the forester in winter, whereby only the lowest three to ten meters of a tree trunk is suitable for shingles. The shingle wood must meet high standards and is specially selected. Only trees that have a so-called "left turn" and that have been split open by hand are suitable so that the wood does not twist after processing and retains its shape.

The wood is debarked and cut to exactly 57 centimeters long burren. The forester must mark the direction of growth on the wood, because the shingle must come to rest on the roof as the tree grew. This means that the root should point downwards and the crown upwards so that the water can flow off along the fiber. The shingle maker gets the wood from the sawmill with the marking that shows him where the root of the tree was.

With a mallet and wedge, the clapboard maker splits the Burren into gaps that look like bite-sized pieces of cake. The shingles are then made from the cracks, the actual handicrafts.

It is split according to a sense of proportion. A distinction is made between 8 - 11 millimeters thick and 3 - 6 millimeters thin shingles. The shingles should be flat so that they can be attached to the roof in three layers; therefore crooked trees are not suitable for making shingles. After splitting the sapwood, the outer edge, is removed, it is too young. The marrow is gone too, it's too restless.

Experienced ears are required for quality control. The three-tone cleavage begins with a creak, followed by a bright, crisp cracking sound and a dry bang.

Sawing is not suitable for working on shingles because it tears up fibers that later soak up water, which massively shortens the service life. As a rule, three to four layers are nailed on top of each other for roofs and three layers for facades. One square meter is nailed on in one hour, the 100 shingles required for this are made in two hours.

Tool

Clapboard knife

The clapboard knife is now shorter, lighter and therefore easier to handle than it used to be. The shingles used to be made much thicker. This had an effect on wood consumption; twice as much wood was needed as today. In the past, the large shingles were fastened with wood and stones because the nails that existed at that time were expensive, rare and unwieldy.

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