The Split Shingle
"A shingle split along the wood's natural grain preserves its fibres, shedding rain and outlasting any machine-sawn board."
Before steam-powered sawmills, roofers split cedar shingles by hand. The craftsman used a froe: a flat, L-shaped blade driven into a log using a heavy wooden mallet. By pulling the upright handle, he pried the wood apart along its natural grain.
Modern sawn shingles cut straight through the wood grain, slicing the fibres and exposing tiny open tubes. These tubes act like straws, sucking in rainwater that rots the wood within decades. Hand-splitting, however, leaves the fibres intact. Rainwater slides off the unbroken surface, keeping the wood dry and durable.
In a rush to standardise and produce at scale, we slice through the natural boundaries of our work. We make clean cuts that look neat but break the structural strength of our code or systems. The split shingle reminds us that aligning with the grain is quieter, safer, and lasts much longer.