Grandpa’s Shingle Mill, the last shingle mill in Washington County, lies far down in the woods off the Halls Mills Road in Whiting. The mill, which is filled with shingles and logs and heavy with the sense of the past, is run by Philip Gardner, who said he remembers when there used to be shingle mills “on every corner. Every sawmill had a shingle machine. But now it’s a thing of the past.” The nearest one may be in East Corinth.
“Back in the day, it was all you had to put on a roof,” he noted of the cedar shingles. While some people still use wooden shingles on their roofs and for siding their homes, “the demand is not so great, and all the shingles come from Canada now.”
Cedar shingles are durable and will last at least 20 years, with some much longer. He noted his daughter has an old farmhouse that may have been built in the early 1800s, and the barn still has its original shingles that were put on with square nails.
Making shingles runs in the family, as his father, Martin, logged in the wintertime and built a shingle mill in 1961 on Mill Stream, between Rocky and Orange lakes. It burned two years later, but “he built it right back.” Philip said he “grew up with it,” bundling and sawing the shingles. In 1983, the Gardners set up the mill in its current location at the end of Ridge Road, off Blueberry Lane, off Halls Mills Road. The road used to be the old stage coach road and led to Marion Township, but today it is all overgrown past the shingle mill. His grandmother had lived in a house there that was surrounded by pasture land that is now all woods — before she moved to the big village of Halls Mills. That neighborhood is named after two Hall brothers who had a large lumber mill on Mill Stream in the 1800s. For his own business, Philip’s children suggested the name Grandpa’s Shingle Mill to honor their grandfather.
Gardner estimates that the shingle machine he uses at his mill may be 150 years old. He sharpens the saw himself and is still able to purchase new saws from Quebec, as they wear down over time. He might be able to get one sharpened in Bangor, “but they’d charge you,” he noted.
After the machine slices the cut logs into tapered shingles, Gardner uses an edger to trim the sides and make them square, sorts them to different grades, depending on whether there are any knots, and scales the shingles into different bins, before they are bundled. The rhythm of the work churns out each shingle in a few seconds.
Gardner uses only white cedar, buying the wood from local loggers. “Sometimes it’s hard to find decent wood,” he said. The farthest away that he’s sold shingles is Nantucket Island, where a building contractor uses them for restoration work on homes. Gardner noted that an ordinance there requires that white cedar shingles must be used, and they can’t be painted. “They go natural to the weather,” he observed.
Gardner, who is 77, said he’s not sure who would take over the shingle business. “If you don’t grow up with it, it’s a tough thing,” he said, noting that it can be dangerous working around the saw if you make a mistake. “It’s an awful struggle to learn everything,” he noted, adding that it’s hard to find anyone to fix the machinery.
“We’ll see how much longer I do it,” he mused. “I’ll probably do it till I can’t do it anymore.”
