Should have got a Plasplugs, then. ;-) You did have an adequate amount of water in it?
Should have got a Plasplugs, then. ;-) You did have an adequate amount of water in it?
I must admit, I regret not getting a Plasplugs. My cheapy Titan or Erbauer (I forget) cuts OK, just, but nothing about it is fun. The guides are crap and the water tray is a PITA.
OTOH I score 'n' snap most of mine, so I use it very little and for that it is sufficient.
A *good* manual score 'n' snap machine however is worth it's weight in gold.
Yes, plenty of water. In the end I opted to get a new Titan blade from SF, figuring that the machine was no use as it was. Cuts ok now although, as Tim says, it's still basically a pile of crap, and I wouldn't say the blade ran perfectly true. I suppose it earned its keep today on the 3mm offcuts and one cut round a pipe. I notice the new blade can be used wet or dry. I'm guessing that it originally came with a better blade, hence the good reviews on the SF site. Reducing the price but substituting a crap blade is pretty sharp practice.
Yep, thank God for the Rubi
My blade wore out.
i've used my crap tilesaw to cut everything imaginable, and a few things that are not. Like 1" thick sandstone paving slabs. MARGINALLY quicker than driving to the hire center for a diamond cutrer in an industrial angle grinder. about an inch a minute :-)
SWMBO doesn't like 'cheap china tiles' so score and snap never proved very useful. They didn't score and they were reluctant to snap..anywhere near where they should.
So I just use my totally naff tilesaw.
Yes indeed. I have the non-pro and it is just so utterly simple and reliable. I never found the need for all the fancy guides the pro versions have (have you seen the price of those!) - I seem to manage with two pencil marks for non parallel cuts :)
I watched a pro tiler doing slate on my kitchen. One thing I was interested in was the fact that his machine, whilst quite solid, wasn;t feature laden. He cut freehand by eye - no guides. But his machine did have a decent blade that gave a good edge.
I liked his trick for cutting semicircles for the mains riser: Mark the cut outline, then make loads of straight parallel cuts into the area to be removed upto the line. Snap out the 3-4mm wide bits left then buzz the blade round the line to clean up. Wish I'd though of that doing the soil pipe cutout in my ceramic bathroom tiles instead of nobbing around with a tile hacksaw and file for 2 hours!
Were you by any chance cutting porcelain tiles? These really need a special blade for a decent life. Or a much slower speed than some saws use.
I tiled a very large bathroom with porcelain tiles - pretty odd shape too, so lots of cuts - with one blade which is still ok on the plasplugs. But it is the 'top of the range' one.
No, ceramic 6mm. Not exactly demanding.
My impression is that Plasplugs put more emphasis on blade quality, whereas Titan are trying to impress with the build and weight of the machine. It is nice and stable in use, and maybe the better blade (effectively adding £15 to the cost of the machine) will make it a halfway decent tool.
Try doing those on a saw :-) Freehand isn't my idea of accuracy.
What I discovered yesterday was that you can cut, say, 3mm off a ceramic by scoring it 3 or 4 times. The offcut either falls off or can be snapped cleanly with tile nibblers. One less job for the ugly Titan beast.
I have to admit that a half round 22 mm cut just wouldn't have been possible without it though. Okay, so it can stay in the loft on probation.
I have a cheapo eleccy tile saw (which I've moaned about in the past) and all I've ever done is freehand (no fence) - all seems fine - how accurate is "accurate"??
One I was particularly chuffed with was making a square hole in a tile to allow a light switch to be mounted with no grout lines going to it
- a plunge cut from underneath if you're with me... ;>)
Jim K
For repeat cuts, it's handy if the fence functions. The Titan one doesn't move easily so micro adjustment is out of the question. That said, there's a measure back and front that seems to be accurate, so you can get it square to the blade eventually. By this time you could have cut them and had them up on the wall using a snapper. Porcelain? Well, I'd never use those for that reason.
Norton do a good 180x25.4 diamond blade, cost about £15.
Cheers. I got the Titan one because I needed it quickly. Probably all from the same source anyway.
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