What should I do when nail in shingle hits sheathing's crack?

[DJW]

I am applying three tab Owens corning as to their nailing instructions with a hammer by placing the nail below the seal strip and above the split that forms the tabs. What should I do if my nail hits nothing? It is old plank sheathing 1940s vintage and when by chance the nail area is over the crack between boards I have found that one to three (or worst case all four) nails just go in fast and hit nothing. I have then at least been putting two more nails above the seal strip. I can figure no other option. I assume I should not pull the bad nails because of the hole created by them. I am concerned down the road that they may pop up a bit and effect the shingle over them. But what else could be done. When a nail goes in without hitting anything I try to adjust the next one over sometime with success and some times with the same no hit results. I start to use profanity when the next two or more do the same.

[dpb]

A plank sheathing roof should be in-filled or lay a plywood nailing overlayer over the sheathing before laying asphalt shingles to eliminate the problem. If the gaps aren't wide enough to in-fill w/

1x, you're only choice is (best) the overlay (sounds like too late for that here, unfortunately) or to adjust the nailing pattern to accomdate the location of the sheathing.

W/O seeing your particular roof, can only suggest filling in the portion you haven't reached so far before you get there. If you have to adjust the nailing pattern excessively, you're bound to have problems down the road and if there are a large number left in which nails didn't have anything to hold, those rows will undoubtedly fail early in a strong blow...if you're where the wind never blows much, you may get by, but it would never last a year out here where.

[Goedjn]

Since it's too late to conveniently fix the decking, is the skip-sheathing a regular size? If so, you should be able to shrink the shingle exposure to match the spacing of the gaps. IOW, if the decking planks are

8.5" on-center, set the shingles with 4.25" exposure instead of 5", or whatever you'd normally use. If the shingles you're using have special gluing instructions for high-wind exposures, follow those.

[dpb]

Good point, if possible. Often, of course, they weren't "even-enough" for asphalt but worked fine w/ the intended wood shingles. The roofs here are a combination of everything from 1x4 to 1x12 and what initially looks nearly random spacing, but works out for wood at

5-6". The other difficulty may be if has sizable gap there's insufficient support for the asphalt between planks.

Hopefully, they're close enough and even enough closing up will work, but I'd suspect he'll just change which row(s) don't line up from one set to another...

[Al Bundy]

DJW wrote in news:1178195587.908169.292690 @n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

Advice alrealy given in other replys but... any nails you see that are not biting get them out. I would think no nail is better than a loose one. Will pop through upper shingle and leak. Of course, the water will actually drip in the house 10ft away.

[marson]

I think getting it out would be prudent, but....I once had to do some repairs to a roof (changing valley tin because the roofer had scored it with his knife). It was an old shiplap roof, and many of the nails had missed wood. The roof was 15 years old and still fine. They were not working up and the condition was not visible until I started removing shingles. I would just throw in nails above the sealing strip in your case. Your roof will be fine.