paving slab cutting

I used a 35 quid tile saw to cut 1" sandstone. It took longer than driving to the hire shop, picking up an angle grinder w diamond blade, cutting the slab and taking the grinder back :-)

No doubt a real industrial wet table saw with plenty of power and water is THE way to do it, but the angle grinder works for me.

Unless you have a very convenient local hire shop, I'd invest in a budget 9 inch / 230 mm grinder and diamond blade. Maybe something like this?

There's a Silverline "soft start" on Amazon for less than £60 delivered, including a disk.

You can hire hydraulic slab cutters cheaply

er.. Why not?

I have a 300mm stone saw which I use for cutting concrete. Apart from being disappointed with blade life when wet cutting I don't see any obvious reason why it would not do a 2" slab.

regards

Woo hoo, cuts 225 mm thick!

OTOH not so useful if you want to take out a rectangular piece of a normal paving slab to fit around a drain or a post.

In message , Phil L writes

I misunderstood your reply.

regards

I hadn't thought about kick back. I can see how dangerous that could be. And you are right, a 600x600mm slab is very heavy so would be difficult to lift and slide. So it makes sense to keep the heavy slab stationery and move the lighter angle grinder. Thanks.

The fact that it heavy makes kick back less likely. There isn't enough energy there to throw a 60 lb slab at any real speed. Its like putting a car on a rolling road and running it up to 70 mph and stopping the road suddenly, the car just jerks and stalls as there isn't enough energy stored to actually make it do much.

there is an episode of challenge Tommy where he hired a diamond bladed table saw. He used it to cut bricks, roofing tiles and slabs with ease. They were not 2x3 pressed slabs so weren't particularly heavy, but I don't suppose he thinks they are heavy as he moves heavy stuff around a lot. BTW it didn't throw water all over the place (it was water cooled) and didn't appear to suffer from kick back but it did have some sort of locking bar to hold the work on the sliding table. Probably interlocked so you couldn't use it incorrectly. It would cut bricks in half in a few seconds, they didn't show him cutting the others.

On other occasions he used an angle grinder and even a diamond chain saw both of which were more dangerous.