Tile Cutters

[Mark]

I have a lot of tiling to do this year so I thought I'd invest in a half decent tile cutter.

I've had a £29.99 Plasplugs one before but am looking for something better.

A quick look in the Screwfix Catalogue has manual cutters at well over £200 and electric diamond bladed ones at a fraction of that cost. What are the merits of each?

mark

[Ray]

Get yourself one of these

've had one about 2 years now and it has never let me down, only had to change the blade once, not expensive and you'll get back half your money if you decide to sell afterwards.

[Mark]

> I've had one about 2 years now and it has never let me down, only had to

Thanks Ray Looks good. Will it cut 450mm tiles? Couldn't tell from the spec.

mark

[Ray]

>>> I've had one about 2 years now and it has never let me down, only had to

Mark,

Absolutely, because there is nothing in the way to place your tile on the table, the saw glides along the rail up to about 600mm.

[The Medway Handyman]

Score & snap cutters are much, much faster than electrics on straight cuts & don't make any real mess.

Electrics will cut 'L' shapees etc & cut thin slivers off tiles, but are slow & make a mess.

I use one of each. Horses 4 courses.

I'd rather have a good score & snap & a cheap electric.

[Skipweasel]

Couldn't snap the last lot of tiles I laid. They were sintered porcelain things and utterly unbustable.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ive used a 39,99 diamond balded one to cut everything from thin tiles through marble slabs, quartzite to sandstone paving spabs.

So far its just cost me one replacement blade, after 5 years of bloody heavy use,laying slate floors, trimming marble vanity tops, and carving out curbed bits of paving. It hasn't done granite, but just about everything else, it has..

Its not made very well, and it sprays me with water, and it rusts where the plating has worn off the bed, but its good enough..I wated far more money in snapped tiles before I got it. .. I suspect if I tiled for a living, I'd spend a couple of hundred, but for occasional use this is more than I need.

[The Natural Philosopher]

1/. I have never FOUND a good score and snap.

2/. They leave shrap edges that have to be sanded off.

3/. An electric will do anythuing a score and snap will do, biut te reverse aint true.

I no longer use score and snap at all. Mainly because I got about a 50% reject rate on anything less than a 15-20% wide snap, they didn't do slivers, they didn't do Ls, they didn't do bevelled cuts, they didn't do semicircular cuts you name it, they didn't do it. They didn't even do straight cuts reliably.

[The Medway Handyman]

I've got two. One is a Powercraft ala Aldi - works a treat.

True, but with cut tiles that will always be hidden by the grout since the cut edges are always against walls or ceilings. They dont need sanding. If anything the edge is cleaner than a tile saw.

It won't do a straight cut in 5 seconds, which a score & snap will.

Agree about thin slices, but I don't have a problem with larger cuts.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No they aren't. What about the outside edges of baths, dormers, maybe box sections? Its not ALWAYS practical to start at the edges and work way, ..a bath has TWO outside edges for example. as dioes a diormer..if yuy diont want an ugly join in the middle, and your dormer isn't an exact number of tiles wide..

They dont need sanding. If

Which is pretty useless if you arer trying to match tumbled marble...o your tiles have bevelled edges.

I think as skipweasle says, a lot also depends on what 'tiles' you are using. Cheap white thins snap well. Try it on marble, quartzite, or slate though, and you will be in trouble.

If you are in business to slap up plain tiles fast, on a fixed price contract, fair enough. However this is DIY, and most people would not be tiling for speed, but for a top quality result using a variety of more expensive materials.

[Stuart Noble]

Anything by Rubi.

Not if you use them properly. *One* light, continuous score, one snap. Similar technique to cutting glass. You can't always see the score but, as the snap happens in the same position, you can't really go wrong.

10mm is about the smallest cut I can do. Sure they don't do marble, slate, or quarry tiles, but they are probably ten times faster than a saw. Horses, courses, as TMH says.

[Stuart Noble]

If you tiled for a living, you'd spend a couple of hundred on a snapper as well :-) And you'd be good at nibbling, so you would probably never need a saw with normal ceramic tiles.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sort of depends on your standards. A 'nibbled' cut will always look like what it is unless you spend a deal of time dressing the nibble. Done with a wet cutter it can be perfect straight from the cutter with care - and with less chance of breaking the tile. Of course it is slower - but that ain't so much of a consideration for DIY.

[Stuart Noble]

Most would be under sockets or tile trim. For the odd visible cut, pro tilers can nibble cleanly faster than they can set up a saw and clear up afterwards. I'd use a saw, especially if I was running out of tiles :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Thanks for admitting you're only talking about time. ;-)

For the average DIYer a wet cutter is simply miles ahead of nibbling. And probably for a pro with a pride in his work.

[Stuart Noble]

I used to wonder why anyone would get a pro in until I watched an Italian guy doing some monumentally fiddly nibbling in a solid floor bathroom with pipes running everywhere. Made me want to give up tiling altogether. I consoled myself with the fact that it took him a long time....