Let's make a wooden shingle

Doubtless, you have seen pictures of Russian churches with their onion domed roofs. Ever wonder about how those domes are made, what kind of shingles they use?

Thousands upon thousands of wooden shingles, Here, Andrei shows us how they are made.

Andrei is a demonstrator at a reconstructed village in Russia.

Kizhi Island, a smallish island in Lake Onega in Russia, is now a museum. The island is home to dozens of wooden buildings, many of them churches, the largest of which is the Church of the Transfiguration, which supports 22 onion-shaped wooden domes.

All of those domes are covered with wooden shingles. Here, Andrei demonstrates how a shingle is made. He uses simple hatchets, or small axes and needs only a couple of minutes to create a shingle.

Our visit to Kizhi was early in the morning and I found Andrei just getting ready for his work. He was sharpening his two hatchets. He used what appears to be an Arkansas stone, and no stropping.

Using only hand gestures (I have no Russian language skills), I asked if I could test the sharpness of one of his hatchets. His answer was the universal back and forth wagging of a finger.

Andrei then went about making a shingle, which I captured in two videos. First, he splits a blank from an aspen log he had nearby. I found it interesting that his splitting wedge appears to be yet another hatchet blade with the handle loop broken off. His log is also just the right length for a shingle, and splits cleanly.

Then, in a mere 2 minutes, Andrei shaped the blank into a shingle. I was interested not only by the shape of the log block he uses as a “workbench,” but how efficient each of his actions are. Note how after cutting one notch, he walks the blade across the blank to the other edge to place a notch there. No rulers, no squares, no pencils, just thousands of previous “muscle memory” actions.

Why aspen? Aspen is flexible, strong and doesn’t burn easily. … Aspen shingles weather to a beautiful silvery-grey and are resistant to rotting and warping.

Find more pictures of the buildings on Kizhi Island on my blog at: https://www.bob-easton.com/blog/hatchets-andreis-and-mine/

P.S. Watch closely, and you'll see evidence that Andrei has been at this woodcutting business for a long time.