Nail gun gauge or chalk line or both?

Im about to put a new roof on. I have no experience so Ive been researching on line mostly. Ive ordered some Owens corning duration shingles. I bought a bostitch RN46-1. It has an adjustable guide
on the bottom for shingle spacing. My question is, If you are using chalk lines is there a reason to use the gauge? It seems to me they’re doing the same thing.
One more question. When using drip edge do the shingles still overhang or just go flush with the drip edge?
Thanks

I don’t rely on a gauge.Actually I took mine off and take them off of all my guns,They get hung up on the shingles.I require everyone to use lines.Depending on their experience either 1 line for every 2 courses or a line for every 4.

My reasoning is when you have 2 or 3 nailers in one area ones eyes are not the same as anothers.Gauges get bumped and go out.The next thing you know you have 2 or 3 roofers looking at guns with tapes and people wasting time and material pulling shingles,checking gauges then arguing about who’s courses are out.

Check your building code for your area but I put at lease 1/4" overhang past the drip edge.

If you never roofed before, I don’t recommend you do it alone without an experienced guide. Certainly not without lines. The problem will be 1,000 people will tell you they are experienced and qualify for the task. But it will turn out that only 2-3 of the 1,000 actually do. VVGL! :expressionless:

Most #15 felt has lines on it. With a tape measure, lay the felt straight, and use those lines for reference.

thanks for the help guys

Of DIY projects people can take on, I can’t for the life of me imagine why anybody would ever want to do their own roof. It’s incredibly hard work, it requires skill to do right, the result of a poor installation can be devastating to most people’s biggest investment (their home) and you can easily get injured or killed. You’re spending good money for a premium shingle, you owe it to yourself to hire a decent crew that will likely cost you around 60% of what the materials cost to properly install the roof.

I can only tell you why one potential customer decided to do it himself.
As background: For the last five years I’ve been digging myself out of a financial pit caused by divorced.
One thing I learned from that was don’t ever delay a divorce because you can’t afford it. She can charge stuff a whole lot faster than you can pay it off. And if you cancel all the credit cards she can get more.
but I digress.
I got to keep the house and and a mountain of debt which is now very close to 0.
about 4 years ago we had a leak and I climbed up and saw maybe 3 shingles missing.
I bought a few shingles from home depot and put them on and that fixed the problem.
However from the general shape of the roof I decided then that a new roof would be a good idea.

Any way up till recently I couldn’t afford to have it done.
I had already had my eye out for those signs in the front yard you guys put up when you do a job
and I had picked a company that I was going to contact cause they had a lot of those signs.
I had the number on my desk but I hadn’t yet called.

Then we got a big wind storm, I was out driving around at the time and saw a telephone pole swaying back and forth, when I got home I couldn’t help but notice about 12 shingles laying in my yard.
That’s when I made up my mind that it was definitely time to get a new roof. Unfortunately many of
my neighbors were coming to the same conclusion at the same time.

Bright and early the next morning I called the number I had (roofer A) and left a voicemail.
Since I didn’t get a reply after a couple hours I drove to roofer B. There were a couple of nice secretaries and they put me on “the list” and I could see at least 15 people were in front of me.
I told them I wanted an estimate for the repair and a separate estimate for the whole roof.
After a week or so I said to myself since all the roofers are busy maybe I’ll try a handyman for the
repair.
I got A guy that mostly paints but has his own signs in the front yards. He said he has someone that
does roofs for him and they would charge $650 for the repair. That seemed like an awful lot especially if I was going to have to turn around and get a whole new roof asap.
As fate would have it, I had surgery on my toes (both feet) in January. At the time the shingles blew off I was still wearing those boot things they have you wear after surgery so I really didn’t want to climb up there myself. I’m guessing it was three weeks after the storm and I hadn’t heard from roofer A or B. I said “F” it, Im going up. There was now rain in the forecast. I got a bucket of safety equipment from Home depot, A rope, a safety harness, and some anchors for the roof ridge.
I bought two bundles of 3 tab and some nails and some 15# tar paper. A step ladder gets me from the garage to the second story roof of the house. I slide up backwards on my butt which is what I would have done even if my toes were ok because unlike 4 years ago there were so many loose granules that sliding down seemed like a very real possibility. I got to the top and put in the ridge anchor and hooked up the rope to the safety harness and to be honest I was still not happy about being up there. I did the repairs. a couple days later we had a good rain and it didn’t leak, I climbed up into the attic to make sure. A week later roofer B calls up and asks if I still need them.
What did I learn up there? Roofing sitting down is a pain in the butt, literally I was burning my butt cause I didn’t have good work jeans on. I couldn’t kneel because of my toes. It wasn’t even a hot day but that roof was getting hot. I learned that handling shingle irritates your skin the same way as insulation. I learned that hammering shingles hurts quite a bit. I learned that I can do it even if I don’t want to. I only used a couple shingles out of the 2cnd bundle
If either roofer A or roofer B had been contacting me and saying ok here is the situation, we can’t be there for another week. I would have let them do the roof replacement even if I had to do the repair myself. roofer A never even returned my call, roofer B had two secretaries that easily could have been keeping customers informed.
That’s one reason someone might decide to do it themselves

Back to the topic, I never used the guage on the nail gun in my life. Heck, until about 4 years ago I didn’t even know what is was for lol, like roofmaster I always removed them from my guns.

xrayguy, you have my respect for getting up there and doing that. But replacing a few shingles and replacing an entire roof involving many detail areas, flashing, etc. is another thing altogether.

The gauges on the guns ( which also come on hand held roofing hammers ) are used mostly in areas that do a 5 inch stagger with 3-tabs. The state of Texas uses this method more than anywhere else I am aware of. In other words they don’t stagger the 3 tabs 6 inches left, then 6 inches right, etc. Instead they all go 5 inches left in a diagonal pattern.

Has anyone here ever installed a 3 tab roof with the 5" stagger. I could probably count the roofs I saw installed that way on one hand. Not bashing if you do it that way just curious.

That’s how I normally install Certainteed Independence’s.
I see regular 3-tab roofs installed that way around here.

A 5" offset in my area is called a “Western Row” Not sure why,Maybe it should be called the “Midwestern Row”,Seriously though I like it.The roof lays much better I think and nobody is tempted to rack those 3 tabs.Which IMO shows vertical pattern and should not be installed that way,unless recommended by the manufacture…

I said IMO this time Axiom,hahahahahahaha

Roofmaster, I kinda look of it myself, probably just cause its different. I doubt I will ever install a roof that way. I think I installed one 3 tab roof in the last year.

In this area, most or just about everyone I have come across shingles a 3-tab 5 5/8" diagonal pattern…laminates as well.

I have only done a 6" offset only one time in 18 years roofing.

I did a few roofs in Dallas/Fortworth Texas area many years ago where the 5 inch stagger was the norm. I remember the first time we had to go around a dormer window. It was quite interesting. When in Rome do as the Romans do. lol

There was ONE local guy around here years ago that did mostly all new construction using the 5 inch stagger method. It didn’t take long to know who had installed the roof. lol

lay the felt straight, and use those lines for reference.

“lay the felt straight, and use those lines for reference.”

I worked for a guy one summer when I was younger, he instited we do it that way. It may work for some but I really didn’t like it. It seemed to take more extra time to get the paper 100% perfect than it would have to snap lines on imperfect paper.