Shingle Mill

Shingle mills, such as this one, replaced laborious hand production. Hundreds of shingles could be produced in an hour. The shingles are cut from cedar “blocks” (“bolts”) that have been stripped of bark. The horizontal saw cuts the wood on a taper, making one end thicker. Shingles were then edged with a vertical saw to the same width and packed in bundles of 250.

This Shingle Mill was originally a woodshed built in the 1890s. The machinery is from Kingan Shingle Mill which was located in Peterborough. The power for sawing and edging the shingles at the mill comes from the Museum's Sawyer-Massey traction steam engine.