Sheet metal, flashing & copings · Capewell & the Rainshadow Coast · Since 2010
The metal nobody notices until it fails.
Dripedge fabricates the roof’s working edge — copings, cap flashings, chimney shrouds, gutter systems and the custom pieces no catalogue stocks. Broke by hand on 20-ounce copper, Kynar-finished aluminium or galvalume, seamed and soldered rather than caulked, and templated to your actual roof rather than the average of everybody else’s.
Water, moved with intent
Every piece is a drainage decision: drips hemmed outward, cleats fastened for expansion, and profiles that shed the coast’s horizontal rain rather than wick it. The metal is the small part; the water is the brief.
The coast’s wind budget
Capewell sees gusts that peel catalogue flashings off in sheets. Our copings are cleated on both faces to the tested spacing, and the cleat pattern is on the drawing — because “well, that seemed tight” is not an engineering position.
Metal that earns its keep
A soldered copper drip edge outlives three roofs and four caulk guns. We quote the twenty-year piece and the five-year piece side by side, and most clients, seeing both, buy once.
Rates
The sheet, priced by the run
Fabricated and installed, templated to the measure. Copper carries its scrap credit and its reputation; aluminium carries the colour warranty; both carry our seams.
The 2026 metal card
Wall coping, 20 oz copperfrom $68/ln ft
cleated both faces, soldered corners
Wall coping, Kynar aluminiumfrom $34/ln ft
to the colour card, forty-two finishes
Chimney cap & shroud, customfrom $410
templated, screened, soldered
Gutter, half-round copper 6 infrom $29/ln ft
soldered joints, hung on hidden hangers
Drip edge & rake, custom profilefrom $12.50/ln ft
hemmed, cleated, your actual roof
Bay-window & dormer kitsfrom $260
the pieces the catalogues do not stock
How a metal job runs
Measured, broke, seamed — in weather windows
Solder hates a wet roof and copper hates a hurried hand. The sequence exists to keep both happy, and the calendar is part of the craft.
The roof measure
Every profile taken off the actual roof, not the plan — radii, setbacks, the out-of-square the framers apologised for. Templates come down the ladder in tin, and the shop builds to them.
The bench & the brake
Broke by hand on lengths the roof allows, cleats punched for expansion, and seams folded rather than snapped. Copper is annealed where the profile turns, because work-hardened copper cracks at exactly the corner you needed.
Seam & solder
Copper joints soldered with lead-free wire to a wiped fillet — milled bright, fluxed, and heated to flow, never filled. The joint becomes one piece of metal, which is why it does not have a lifespan; it has yours.
The weather window
Installed on the dry days the forecast actually delivers, cleated to the tested spacing, and walked off with the hose test at the end. Water goes where the drawing said, in front of whoever owns the building.
Storm-season lead times run three weeks by October — the coping that lifts in November is the one measured in July · (555) 346-8890 · sheet@dripedgemetal.example
Soldered, not caulked
Every copper joint we ship is a soldered union of one metal to itself — no sealant in the water path, no twenty-year countdown that starts when the tube was opened. Caulk has its place on a roof; the place is not between the metal and the rain.
Cleated for expansion
Metal moves with the sun, and a coping that cannot move tears itself off. Our cleat pattern is on the drawing, spaced to the tested schedule, and the fastener never pierces the water face — the roof keeps its shirt tucked in through the gusts that peel catalogue stock.
The colour match, held
Kynar finishes pulled to the existing roof’s batch where it exists and sourced to the closest card where it does not, with the sample held against the actual elevation before the brake makes a single foot. Patina is the copper’s own decision; everything else is ours to match.
Two roofers quoted us the catalogue flashing and a prayer; Dripedge templated the parapet in an afternoon and broke copper to it. Six winters of coast wind later, the coping is the only part of the roof we have never thought about — which I now understand is the entire product.
The dormer kits were the pieces nobody stocked — the catalogue answer was a roll of coil stock and a prayer. These arrived templated, cleated and soldered, and the installers put them on with the hose test the same afternoon. The best money on the whole roof.
Our last chimney cap came from a box and lasted three coastal winters. The Dripedge shroud is a piece of furniture that happens to live on a chimney — soldered seams, screen you can see through, and it has outlasted the box cap twice over with no sign of caring.
Asked under every eave
Copper or aluminium — what does the difference cost?
Aluminium carries the colour warranty and roughly half the price; copper carries the decades and the scrap credit, and it never needs the colour matched because its finish is a patina it earns. On the coast the honest arithmetic usually lands on copper for anything you do not want to touch again, and aluminium for the long runs where budget is the brief.
Why does soldering matter more than sealant?
Sealant is a viscoelastic polymer doing a metal’s job — it adheres, it ages, it lets go on a schedule you can roughly read off the tube. A soldered joint is one continuous piece of metal with no schedule at all. The roof moves, the joint moves with it, and in seventy years the failure will be somewhere else entirely.
Can you match our existing gutters and caps?
Usually — profiles are templated off the roof and reproduced in the same metal and finish, with the new sections soldered into the sound parts of the old rather than replacing a whole run for one corner. Where a match is not honest we show you why and quote the alternative.
When should flashing be replaced rather than repaired?
When it is nailed through its water face, snapped at the seams, or holding on by the caulking of previous owners — each of those is a failure that has already happened, paused. The measure visit ends with a written answer per run, including the runs that need nothing.
The measure is free, and the answer is per run.
We template the actual roof, mark what must be replaced, what can be soldered into service and what needs nothing at all — then quote the metal to the template. Capewell, the Rainshadow Coast and the wet belt behind it.