Although it was a very arduous job, a new roof contractor could trim 10 to 15 squares of roofing slate in a ten-hour day, amounting to about four to five tons of rock. The trimmers also had to shovel their rubbish as well as the splinters, and sometimes help the block cutter with his work. After trimmining, nail holes were punched in the slate. This was done by placing each slate, one at a time, on a slate punch. A foot pedal operated the machine which caused two sharp, metal punches to poke nail holes in the slate about one fourth to one third of the way down from the top and about an inch and a quarter to two inches from the sides. The punch breaks out the back of the slate when it pokes the holes through, and this breakage was advantageous as it allowed for the head of the nail to be countersunk into the slate. This kept the nail head from rubbing on the overlapping slate after being nailed to a roof thus prolonging the life of the roof.
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The slate in Pennsylvania for a new roof is still split into roofing shingles by hand, and the blocks are kept wet with water during the splitting process to enhance the ease of splitting. The stone is said to split with much greater ease when the quarry sap is not allowed to evaporate. It is an opinion echoed by slate workers in Wales and elsewhere in Europe, who insist that slate blocks left out on the surface of the earth to dry will not split as readily as freshly quarried slate. The splitting of slate into the right thickness for roofing shingles may not entirely be the responsibility of the splitter, but may involve the block cutter and the blacksmith. The block cutter can split the incoming block to the proper thickness to allow for a predetermined number of slates to be produced from one slab. Since the standard thickness of a roofing slate is 3/16", the slab should be a factor of that thickness. In order for the block cutter to consistently split a block to the thickness desired, his chisel is conveniently made to the proper width and can be used as a measuring tool as well as a chisel.
