How To Remove Roof Slates

Cutting sculping splitting trimming and hole punching.

How to remove roof slates.

Tossing the shingles safely is actually an important step in removing slate shingles. A vinyl leaf rake can clean harder to reach spots. Removing shingles involves moving nails. Slate roofing tiles are still manufactured by hand using traditional methods in a five step process.

When removing slates from old roofs quite often the slating lath or batten has become dry and brittle over time this makes it very easy to break when using a slate ripper to pull a slate out or chop the nails fixing the slates. You do not want these nails to stay on the roof nor do you want to leave them scattered around your yard. Use heavy rubber gloves to scoop up material in areas you can safely reach. In the manufacturing process large irregular blocks taken from the quarry are first cut with a saw across the grain in sections slightly longer than the length of the finished roofing slate.