A friend of mine, who is a home builder by trade, came up to me one day and said he wished there was a better way to apply a backing, fascia board and shingle strip to roof rafters. He complained about how tedious this job was because it required buying three pieces of lumber, making three sets of cuts, and having to climb a ladder to put the backing in, go down, put in the fascia board, go back down, and then come back. climb the ladder to nail the shingle band. “There has to be a better, simpler way to do this job,” he said.

For those of you unfamiliar with these terms, a fascia board is a band of material that covers the ends and sides of the joist as it travels up the rake. A shingle band (also commonly called a rake board) is a trim board that is fastened to the top front of the fascia board to support the overhang of the roof shingles and to protect the fascia from dripping water. Traditional wood frame construction methodology requires two separate pieces of lumber and a two-step application process to apply the fascia board and shingle band over the backer board.

Having done this routine up and down the stair fascia, shingle band several times, I understood what my friend was talking about. This got me thinking; A one-piece fascia/shingle strip board seems to work great for vinyl or metal siding applications, so why not make one out of wood?

And that’s exactly what I set out to do!

For those of you who haven’t read any of my previous articles, I am the founder and president of Cedar Knoll Log Homes. While Cedar Knoll Log Homes’ primary focus is log home design and development, I am fortunate to have some very talented engineers on staff who are always up for a good specialty design challenge. So they went to the machine shop to create a set of custom blades that would produce a fascia board/shingle band in one piece. I got back in touch with my friend and asked him to test the prototype fascia board/shingle band on his next job. He happily agreed. After the job was done, he called me and said, “While I doubt this new one-piece fascia board/shingle strip will cause snow in July, it made this job so much easier and saved me several hours in one ladder”. .

At $1.49 per linear foot (made of white pine or $2.49 per linear foot of white cedar), this time-saving new product also allows homebuilders to save up to 30% on the cost of materials to purchase fascia boards and separate tile bands. This means that homebuilders using this one-piece fascia/shingle band board can pass the savings on to their customers or keep the savings to increase their profits. Either way, the time savings mean builders are working smarter instead of harder, and the time saved can be used to get other tasks done.