It should be dry. It's a standard shake roof, so minimum 3 plies in any one spot. Should be water tight for 20+ years. We were going to put the hose to it before we moved it, but it was getting dark and we needed to move the rabbits into it. I have put up lots of shakes over the years and it's not hard to make a water tight roof with them. We made a variety of shakes....quarter sawn, plain, rift, and some with sapwood. I want to see how long each holds up. Most of these were 5" wide.
Thanks. We have split them by hand or purchased in the past, but this was our first time sawing shakes. It is much faster than splitting and then dressing by hand. Buying shakes is very expensive and hand splitting takes a lot of time/energy. We were putting them up as fast as they came off the mill. I would saw 10-11 ft long 5/16" - 3/8" thick strips on the mill and my son would pull them off and cut them to length on the chop saw. I would staple them on the roof as soon as I was done milling the strips. That way he could keep cutting them to size while I used up the stacks he was making. It went pretty fast, but would have been faster with a third person tokeep all 3 jobs running non stop. There should be 2-3 people putting them up, because they come off the mill and get trimmed so fast, but the people putting them up really need to know their stuff so you get the best quality roof. Putting up shakes is an art and not a "just slap em on there" kind of job. Every detail works in combination to determine how long the roof will last and if it will leak. We had some serious wind and rain here over the weekend and the roof held up great with no leaks. It doesn't even look like it has been rained on.
Thanks for the update, it's good to hear it's watertight. You got me to thinking about making cedar shingles for something around the place......just gotta decide what I'm going to build next.
Been sawing a bit of oak trailer decking recently.....several of the logs had iron deposits......been running dull blades, so's I don't ruin good ones.
