How to Stain Cedar Shingles and Shakes
There were only a few snippets of information out there on a good method of mass staining all 6 sides of cedar shingles or shakes so I thought I would prepare a more comprehensive posting.
We need to stain and install 600 sq feet of cedar shingles and wanted to pre-stain all 6 sides prior to installation. The problem is how to quickly stain over 1000 shingles and how to let them dry without messing up the painting area with drips or leaving smears on the wood. Painting with a brush and leaning them against something seemed to be too daunting and slow so this is what we came up with and so far it appears to be working well.
We considered hanging the thin end on clothes lines, for us that wasn’t feasible given the weather and our layout. Another good idea is using rain gutters, attached to the walls and tilted to let the drips of stain run back into buckets but that too seemed impractical as we hoped to do most of the work in our garage.
Our approach was to rip many kerf cuts through 2×10’s and insert the narrow end of the shingle into the kerf cut to dry. We cut a kerf every ¾” (11 in total) through three 2x10x10. We used a ⅛ kerf, which I tested the width of prior to the final cuts, but in the end there were a few that didn’t quite fit. A slightly wider kerf may have been better. For those that didn’t quite fit, we just supported them between those that were secured. We figure we got about 100 shingles in a single 2x10x10 which is pretty good density given our work space in the garage.
Prior to staining, our shingles arrived totally soaked and given limited availability due to Covid, we were lucky just to get these so we kept them and are using this technique to dry them first before staining. That’s why you are not seeing any drips of stain, they are simply wet shingles.
We figure it will take 5 days per batch to dry the wood enough before we can stain them.
Once I get to the staining I will update this post.