Patent ID: 7640928

Claim:
A method of producing fiber-cement shake panels from a fiber-cement sheet, comprising: (a) providing a fiber-cement sheet comprising cement, cellulose and silica; (b) cutting the fiber-cement sheet along a cutting plane at a station and thereby producing a plank having a downstream edge and an upstream edge, wherein the upstream edge is formed along the cutting plane and the plank has a width from the downstream edge to the upstream edge; (c) forming a plurality of slots through the plank at the upstream edge of the plank and thereby producing a fiber-cement shake panel having a web portion and a plurality of shake sections extending from the web portion, wherein the slots extend from the upstream edge of the plank to an intermediate portion of the plank; (d) moving the fiber-cement sheet so that another portion of the fiber-cement sheet is at the station; (e) repeating processes (b)-(d) and thereby producing a plurality of fiber-cement shake panels from the fiber-cement sheet, wherein the slots of all of the fiber-cement shake panels formed from the fiber-cement sheet extend from the upstream edge to the intermediate portion of each corresponding fiber-cement shake panel; and (f) cutting a strip having a width less than the width of the planks from either an up stream end of the sheet before cutting the plants, or from the downstream edge of the last plank remaining after the other planks have been cut.