If recycled Chapman slates are not available, almost any black Pennsylvania slate can be used to repair a Chapman roof, so long as the slate is sound, although no slate will match the roof quite as well as a genuine Chapman slate. It should he noted that the slate in Pennsylvania seems to become harder and more durable as we move farther south in the state. When we arrive at the border between Pennsylvania and Malyland, we find a black slate so hard and durable that it is considered by many to be the best new roof slate in the world.

In nearly three decades of working on slate roofs I had never seen a Peach Bottom slate (or so I thought) and hadn’t a clue about what one looked like. One day someone phoned me and told me he had some roof slates for sale. This was a guy just five miles down the road and he described the slates as "really nice, beautiful Peach Bottom slate." I drove to his country home to look at the slate and sure enough, there lay a pile of really nice slate in his front yard, neatly stacked, with scalloped bottoms. They were a light gray slate, which I recognized as sea green slate front Vermont.