By Mark Clement
Ripping off shingles is so-o-o-o-o not a refined task. But that doesn't mean the standard tool I've used for tearing them off — basically a garden spade with teeth and a fulcrum — couldn't use some refining.
Shingle tear-off is about hitting hard, fast and showing no quarter. Turn up the radio (Godsmack, Disturb'd, Green Day, and/or Metallica are among my music suggestions) and have at it. So when I saw the Red Ripper looking primed to match the intensity the job requires, I had to check it out.
Grr-r-r-r-r. I cut the Red Ripper's teeth into a two-course tear-off. Layer #1 was diamond-shaped asphalt "hurricane" shingles, as I've heard them called. Layer #2 was diamond-shaped asbestos shingle tiles. Both appear to have been put on before I was born and, though decrepit, they combined to form the toughest roof tear-off I've done.
The hurricane shingles were brittle as rice paper and wanted to come off in kibbles and bits. The asbestos, on the other hand, was rigid and broke sort of like glass. The asbestos was also fastened with 1-1/4 inch nails that bit into the sheathing like a pit bull with lock-jaw. Neither layer of leaking roof, however, was a match for the voracious Red Ripper appetite.
"Jack" the Red Ripper (I name my tools, by the way; one could easily make the case I have issues, perhaps a three-ring binder thereof) dug in deep. I stripped from the top down and from the bottom up and had okay results in both directions. Between the roof's pitch, the shingles' condition, the walkability of the pitch and the shingles' nailing schedule, however, I stripped more shingles in bigger clumps faster and easier tearing off from the side.
Jack's leading-edge teeth faced little challenge getting into and under multiple courses. What I also liked was that the posterior teeth would grab nails while I extracted the tool from under the shingles. This was frustrating at first, but once I learned the dance, I found this saved me loads of time: other strippers miss these nails because they only work in one direction. The result is that I spent far less time when I walked the roof to find shiners — because they weren't there — after I cleared it of shingles.
The Red Ripper's teeth themselves really enabled getting almost every nail. While slim — a huge advantage when stripping shingles — not a single one deformed. I'm really impressed with their temper.
As for leverage, fuggetaboutit. The 1-1/4 inch nails holding down the original asbestos shingles proved the very toughest to remove, but they couldn't hold Jack back. And while the 10- and 12-penny nails the original carpenters used to nail off the roof decking had wiggled proud over the 80 years of the home's life, I could barely tell the difference between yanking one of them versus yanking a roofing nail. I'm impressed.
I also liked that the tool's face could not only wedge under but could separate large tracts of shingle globs from the roof deck. I don't know this from scientific testing to be sure, but the wedges on the face of the tool look like they're not there by accident, and they do a job that makes my life easier.
The Red Ripper I used has a shovel-type D-handle, but I found that I gripped the tool equally by the hickory handle as I did by the D. I mention that because you can get a D-handle or a straight one.
I also liked the angle of attack between the handle and the ripping head because it delivers a great arc (some carpenters call this "fetch") to pull long nails and/or apply serious leverage to long and/or embedded nails. That's power where I need it. It also worked just fine stripping shingles from a small doghouse dormer.
And that's what my friend Jack, AKA Red Ripper, is all about: the power to play rough all day long.
Roofers World
Mark Clement is a remodeler and author of The Carpenter's Notebook and The Kid's Carpenter's Workbook, Fun Family Projects! Check out his books and current projects at his new website.
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