Shingling...

I spent the last week shingling for Zyl.  I thought I would show some of the tools and explain a bit about the process.

I always try to reduce what I'm carrying in my nail bags to the bare essentials.  That way I'm not carrying too much weight, but I also do not have to climb down a ladder incessantly to get another tool.  I think creatively about how I can reduce what is necessary, without reducing efficiency.  For this job I was up on a scaffold plank for the higher sections of wall.  Therefore, I needed to keep everything stashed up on the plank, without blocking the back and forth movement in the shingling process.   The plank is pictured below.

The tools pictured below are all that I needed for most aspects of the job.  Sometimes I would use a pry bar to pop a shingle that was not right and nips to pull unwanted staples, but usually I did not need them.  I kept these tools in a bucket that was hung off the plank for when they were necessary.  For the most part the speed square, a pencil, the caliper scribe and a utility knife were all I carried.  I kept a jig saw and a stapler on the plank, along with a crate full of shingles.

I really enjoyed using the caliper scribe and got more comfortable using the tool.  The function of the scribe is to mark a line (tracing from an existing surface) on the shingle that I could then follow with the jigsaw and fit the shingle into the curved sections of the trim, the round windows, and the rafters.  Usually after the shingle was cut I would hold it in place and see if there was any gap.  If there was a gap, I would use a utility knife to trim the shingle and fine tune it to slip in with as little gap as possible.  This caliper scribe tool in particular has a split nut that allows you to change the width of the calipers with one hand.  You squeeze it and release the tension and it springs open or you can squeeze it closer together.  The "quick release" aspect of the split nut was really useful.  The caliper scribe is one of my new favorite tools, and I was excited to get to know the tool and ride the learning curve.