Fort Kent man invents new roof rake

FORT KENT – A new tool invented by a Fort Kent man removes not only the snow from Maine roofs, but the aches and pains of doing it as well as the possibility of falling off the roof.

Removing snow from roofs has been a precarious chore for ages, but Roland Charette’s new roof rake now makes it just short of enjoyable.

Instead of shoveling or using a snow scoop to push snow from the roof to the eaves or pulling and tugging at a conventional roof rake until arms ache from the strain, pushing Charette’s rake up the roof breaks up the snow, allowing it to slide off in large chunks. That is especially nice in northern Maine, where homes now have up to two feet of snow on the shingles.

Orders for the Charette Roof Rake triple with every sale, as other people see the tool at work.

“I’ve been working on this for six or seven years,” Charette, 55, an inventor of sorts for decades, said Friday. “You should see the contraptions I started with, using wires, pieces of steel and whatever else I thought would work.

“I’ve got it down now where it is just about perfected,” he said.

Charette gets frustrated because others are copying his yet to be patent-protected tool, but still he continues making them, showing a couple of dozen in production along two walls of his shop.

“It’s incredible that someone is using my design,” he said. “I’ve sold some of these, and then I hear it’s been copied,” said Charette, manager of Charette’s Building Supplies and Ace Hardware in Fort Kent.

Although there are other models out there, he insists none works like his.

Charette’s rake is made with a 3-inch-wide strip of aluminum bent into a U. Its forward edge is sharpened to cut easily through crusted snow. An 8-foot-long vinyl tarp – the same width as the U-shaped aluminum – trails behind, allowing the snow chunks to slide off the roof. The unit is about 18 inches across and 16 inches high. Three little plastic skis screwed to the bottom of the aluminum knife keep the cutting edge an inch above the roof shingles, preventing damage to the roofing. The cutter attaches to a multisegmented aluminum pole.

Word about Charette’s invention is spreading across the St. John Valley. Charette produces the rakes every night and delights in talking about his contraption. Everyone needs one, he said, and it helps people complete a chore that can be a big, dangerous job.

“It’s an incredible machine,” he said. “This revolutionizes roof snow removal.”

Charette can be reached at 201 East Main St., Fort Kent 04743, or by calling 834-5734.