Bending Custom Flashings with a Tapco Brake (2025 Builders' Show)

In the ProTradeCraft LIVE Construction Demonstration Zone, we bent some custom flashing profiles on a Tapco brake. Remodeler Michael Anschel heckled Aron Jones, who bent the profiles, while Kelsey Spencer installed them.

TRANSCRIPT:

Step Flashing: The Humble Hero

We will move over to what is arguably the best, most awesome flashing—my personal favorite, Michael's favorite flashing in the entire world—the humble step flashing.
No, no, no, no!
All right, okay. But it starts that way. It starts as a flashing, but it's so much more than that. It starts that way, but step flashing is also important too.
Absolutely.

Standing Seam Roof Tool

So, has everybody seen this tool before? I don't know if we have these. This is a standing seam roof tool. It is a pocket pan former.

If you're trying to do metal origami—you're trying to close up a corner without cutting—these things go down like fingers over the top of this metal and fold a corner.

You can do it with needle-nose pliers. There are other specific round-nose pliers for doing the same thing. 

Folding Without Cutting

And it's nothing new. This stuff's been around for a long time. We're just starting to pick up on it in the residential industry more and more and more.

So, hopefully, you guys were paying attention there, but essentially, I just folded that over to create that kick without cutting, snipping, or adding any tape.

I can either crush this in my brake, I can bring it down on the ground, I can flatten it out—and then, if you're a fan of the siding guy, if you like him, if you're a friend of yours—you can cut that sharp corner off.

Now, usually, I am the person installing the siding, so I like to clean all this stuff up.

Step Flashing Saves Houses

But this is probably the most critical and cheapest flashing. I don't know if it's my favorite, but it is critical.

And it's my favorite because it saves houses from being destroyed. Right?

That roof-to-sidewalk connection—we've seen it so many times in remodeling where water has run down that house, it's taken the mortar out of the brick.

Maybe someone was silly, and they put a window below it as well, right? So water hits the top of the window, and that whole section of wall—you know, it's $50,000 of repair work for what, a 15-cent piece of flashing?

Including my time, we're about $1.25.

Valley Flashings

These are our valley flashings. If we could do a valley flashing, we could do a simple W flashing. We've talked about this in the past, but what is the purpose? Like, why not just do a V? Why not just make a soft step-type-looking flashing?

Well, you protect the valley. You can… What kind of works?

Why use a "W" valley flashing?

So the W does one major thing—and the foremost thing it does is: anytime you've got water running down a steep slope, if it hits that valley and there's nothing to interrupt it, it wants to keep going.

So if we put this W—which I'm going to bend here while I'm talking instead of just talking—if we put this W in place, it interrupts that water flow.

It stops the water, it breaks it up, and it starts to funnel it down the valley.

The other little thing it does, beyond just making this functional, is it also stiffens up your flashing—and you're more likely to get it in place without having all kinds of smiley faces straight up your valley.

So this is our W. This is a W flashing. Water's going to come down, it's going to hit the W—it's a disruptor. It's not going to zip up the other side, and then it's going to flow down.

But there's—it reminds me of you.

Double-W valley flashing

So we've got—we're going to do a second kind of valley flashing. Last flashing.

This is relatively new to the industry. This is the double W, which probably needs a better name than "double W."

So Aaron, are we double the disruption, or is there a secondary purpose for these other W's?

The other W's serve a great secondary purpose. You'll find that we will start using this more often with composite roofs. You're going to see this becoming a standard detail.

A lot of the synthetic slates that are out there are available right now—this will hide all the cut edges. Cut edge, yeah. It hides all the cut edges.

So that's the primary purpose of it: it hides the cut edges, it slows water coming down those steep slopes, and it still provides you with a clean, open valley and a nice stiff flashing that you can install without a bunch of wrinkles.