Tire shingles
Tire shingles

Introduction

The tire pile
The tire pile

An introduction goes here.

Information on Tires

Some informaton on chemical makeup and Recycling.

The Big Idea

One day, I saw a bunch of old tires used as a retaining wall and that got me thinking about what other uses old tires could make. I had a few thoughts about what to make but I liked the idea of tire shingles the best. The fact that there is almost an endless supply and they are free hooked me.

General description

The Clients and the Coop
The Clients and the Coop

Materials for Shingles

  1. 36 Race Car Tires
  2. Sharp Razor Blades

Materials for Roof

  1. (3) 3/4" Plywood sheets
  2. (2) 8ft 2"x4"
  3. Screws
  4. Miscelaneous wood that I had

Clients/Site

As you can see these are my clients. The owners of the chickens wanted the run of the coop covered (the right side). I discussed my idea with them and they agreed to let me build it. Little did I know . . .

Trial and Error

As with any project there are always mistakes, or learning curves as some might say. So here is where I tell you about what didn’t work (for me). The initial tire concept was based on utilizing radial tires and that changed very quickly. The first tire I tried to cut was, to say the least, very smelly. I tried using a cutting wheel on the end of a drill (spinning at about 30,000RPM) and I found that while it would cut through the bead of the tire and all of the steel belts it wouldn’t cut the rubber, it just melted it. After breathing a cloud of burning rubber and trying it again wearing a breathing mask, I decided that it may not be the most “appropriate” method. That particular method took about an hour and a half with only 8 small shingles being produced. The next method I tried was a jigsaw; it didn’t even cut through the rubber. The tire was too flimsy and would shake, so the jigsaw couldn’t cut it if the tire didn’t stay still. I didnt even get one shingle out of that attempt. The last method I used on the radial tires was a hack saw and let’s just say that it would have taken more than a year to cut the shingles that I needed. I then learned that there is only one part of a radial tire that doesn't have steel belts and that is the side wall between the tread and bead. I did try to use a razor blade and cut just the side wall but it was harder to cut curves and keep them some what straight edged.

The Method Used

After several failed attempts with radial tires, I spoke with a local tire dealer and found that Racing tires only have Steel belts in the side walls, not in the tread. He happened to have an old tire so I took it home to see what I could do. I drilled a hole in the tread and used a key hole saw to start cutting. It went rather smoothly but it did take two people and still took about 45 minutes to make 12 – 14 shingles. I knew these were the type of tires I needed but I needed a lot of them, it turns out the the guy at the local tire dealer knew someone who had a ton of old Racing tires. Before I went to the store to buy brand new hole saws, I tried a razor blade (just for laughs actually) and found that it cut through the tire like a hot knife through butter (Image1). This method cut the time down to minutes. After cutting the side walls off, I had a round thin circle of rubber(Image2). Then cut it so it was a long flat sheet about 8” x 80” (Image3).

Image1
Image1
Image3
Image2
Image2

Now that I had a sheet of rubber all that was left to do was make the actual shingles. As you can see in Image3 I used a piece of chalk to mark where I needed to make the cuts. I averaged 14 shingles per tire. This is a good time to have a friend with you. My friends and I used a method that we called "the bend and spread". As you can see, below in Image4 the "bend" portion refers to actually bending the rubber strip to help keep the rubber from kinking while cutting. Image5 is showing the spread part, while being cut the person bending the rubber should also help sread it so it is easier and faster to cut. I didnt time how long each individual tire took to cut, but with four people and in four hours we cut all 36 tires and made 460 shingles. I was very happy with the time results. Each tire produced about 2ft^2.

Image4
Image5
Image6
Image6

The Roof

As mentioned earlier during the Clients/Site portion, I ended with "little did I know . . .". Well, I didnt think ahead with the weight factor. The run that was already built for the coop was way too flimsy to support these shingles. The shingles averaged 14 lbs. per 25 shingles and I had 460. Since covering the run was out, the owners and I needed to think of what we could do instead. They had a big ennough garden and the chickens already had access to it so we decided to build a semi-portable roof and place it in the garden area. Image6 is the sketch for the new roof and it required (2) 8' 2"x4" and (3)4'x8'Plywood sheets.

Image7
Image7
Image8
Image8


Conclusions

Actual Results

Discussion

Hypotheses from results.

Final Comments

Not very straight triy to make a cutter


Usefull Links

Tire Recycling at Ohio State

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