Here is one of the first copper gazebo roof caps I made several years back for a large eight sided entry porch roof built onto the front of a house in Boring, Oregon, just South-East of Portland.  We did this in conjunction with the gutter replacement and some vinyl soffit work they asked me to perform. This cap alone stands about 4. 5' tall and 2' wide at the base.  I had decided to give this cap a steeple look and the customer was pleased with the results.

Although, looking back it is a bit of an embarrassment to me now. In order to save copper here I cut these 17 separate pieces and sealed them together.   We since feel that it is best to do what we can to minimize the number of seams for better looks, strength, and far less chance of it leaking a century later.  It is also far too time consuming to seal and rivet all these seams together, and is simply not worth the copper sheet metal we saved to do it that way. We also use a lot more rivets along the seams that I do need to seal, for better strength. More like good aircraft construction.

It took about 16 square feet of copper sheet metal to form this roof cap. The cost of this back in 1999 was around $350 installed.  They got a good deal, but it was the first large roof cap we had made. We now do our design and fabrication a lot differently, and use a thicker copper sheet metal as well. Also copper has doubled in cost since then.

In hind-sight:
If  I were to put the same labor into this, in sealing all 8 sides together, I should have made it with tapered panels to give it a smooth transition from the roof angle up to the tip; starting at the bottom with the same 8/12 pitch as the roof.  It would look better and made the attachment more stable. I also now use stainless steel screws instead of nails so it can be removed without damage for reroofing and then reinstalled. I also integrate a hidden roof vent with a lot of the roof caps we make these days.

Below is a photo of our
Better Business Bureau's
NW Business Integrity Award
for the year 1998

We were also a 1997 finalist for this same award. See our referral web page to see how we managed to be honored with this special award