Slate edging tool

One of those one sided files with individual teeth on will do a decent job. Sorry don't know the proper name.

Support the edge close to the edge of an anvil. (Steel bar, back of an axe stuck in large log, bucket of a JCB -that sort of thing.)

Chip along it with a hand axe or bill-hook. You only need to do the bottom half of one face.

You need a proper slate cutter: looks vaguely like a large tough pair of pliers or tin snips from a distance (they are around 12inches long). Around a 10 to 15gbp IIRC. It's easy to cut slate with these and they produce a correctly chamfered edge finish. I bought mine from a local dealer in new & reclaimed slates. Look in yellow pages for roofing merchants - (also you might find them in a builders merchant which deals a lot with roofing). Even if they don't sell them, it's always worth asking where you can get one.

You'll find you get the knack of using them after only a few cuts, after that there's very little waste.

The cutter has a built in holer too. When I do a roof with a new size of slate I make a simple template jig out of a joist offcut & rest the cutter upside down in a groove cut in it, then slide the slate in to a timber stop nailed onto the joist & the nail holes are the correctly positioned.

Worth its weight in gold compared with messing about trying to saw slates with a masonry saw.

BTW always use with gloves - spikes of slate are acutely painful buried in your skin. HTH

Thanks guys.

Just a bit of feedback for anyone who is interested:

Did a bit of research and found a site which sells slater's axes and slate snips

mark b

Surform?

Dreadnought. It's a curved tooth rasp, rather than a file. Some are double sided.

Another tool that will do it is a carbide "tile file"

Sir

I have piles of welsh slate and have been using it in some building work. The way I cut it is with a bricklayers trowel. Put the slate on a hard edge (7N block in my case) and slice alon the edge with the trowel.

If you goto the mines and watch the demo, they use a piece of metal as the edge, and a machetie like thing as the slicer.

My roofer has a sisor like device, but it would not do the thick slates I have on my roof.

Rick

Im with the axe and steel edge. Thats how I was taught about 30 years ago, little boys axe thingy works best!!