How were the early external gutters made?
After it became a matter of building code in this area to have gutters on houses to save them from ground erosion, to try and make it cost effective they were using steel sheet metal for gutters, instead of copper, since aluminum was still not a reality yet. But these steel gutters were not lasting very long. Later they developed a galvanizing for steel to make it last longer. They were able to make them last 10 to 20 years, depending how clean they were kept. They did not have complex sheet metal roll forming machines to generate continuous gutters like we have today. Sheet metal craftsmen would have to carefully bend 10 foot strips of metal into the wood molding shape for the outer face of the gutters, to replace the old wood moldings. Some cheaper gutters would only have a plain flat face to them, being the first fascia gutters, just not as tall. Again, they would have to use solder, since they did not have the good caulks like we do today. Still, the inherent danger of the open fla
