How To Cut 1 Cm Of Tiles

3 ways to cut tiles at home Ways and tools for cutting and adjusting tiles with your own hands to the required size. How to use a manual tile cutter and an angle grinder to cut tiles.

3 ways to cut tile at home

Any ceramic tile laying process is not complete without cutting it. There will be a lot of it especially if you use some kind of non-standard layout, for example, diagonally. In the last article, we talked about which layout is better to choose in order to get uniform and beautiful cuts everywhere. Now we will talk about how to properly cut tiles at home.

As you know, tiles are made of baked clay, which is covered with glaze on top. It’s hard to break it with your hands, but if it lies on any unevenness, then it easily cracks from a small load. To simplify this process and make the required break line, you need to loosen the top layer of the glaze. That is, cut it, and therefore make efforts to break.

There are 3 main ways to do this:

1. Special tool. Manual, electric tile cutter or special tongs.
2. Angle Grinder.
3. Other handy sharp tools.

How to cut porcelain stoneware

It is believed that porcelain stoneware is the hardest material from which floor tiles are made. You can trim it in the same way as a regular tile.

Sometimes simple floor tiles are more difficult to cut than porcelain stoneware. There is a hardened tile, on which, after cutting with a tile cutter, an incision in the glaze is almost invisible. And even a diamond disc does not take it on an angle grinder. The notch turns out to be torn, like after a tractor. In such cases, use an angle grinder and file a 2–3 mm groove from the back to mark the fracture location.

How to cut tiles without a tile cutter

If you only need to cut a few tiles, it doesn’t have to be spent on a tile cutter. You can use the tools at hand:

• Glass cutter.
• Drill. It should preferably be with a victorious tip, as it will scratch the tile better.
• Nail.
• Construction knife.

Attach a metal ruler to the notch and draw once with a glass cutter or drill. A deep scratch should remain on the enamel. If you use a knife, but you will need to carry out several times.

Place the tile with the cut at the corner and press down on its edges with a sharp motion. The cut will not turn out perfectly flat, unlike the tile cutter, but you will not have to spend additional money.

How to trim (sharpen) tiles at a 45 degree angle?

Everyone calls this action differently: sawing down, sharpening, trimming, gouging, the Kremlin corner. The meaning is the same.

For high-quality trimming of the tile end at 45 degrees, you will need an electric tile cutter (tile cutting machine) or, in extreme cases, an angle grinder (angle grinder) with a disc on the tile.

Electric tile cutter

Electric tile cutter, or as it is also called by tilers. Wet cutter. It has a water-cooled disk, and the same water extinguishes all possible dust. The tile cutter cuts along one clear, fixed path and minimizes human error such as hand shake, etc.

The tile cutter has two working positions. A straight cut and a 45 ° cut (in fact, you can set any angle from 0 to 45 °, but this most often does not make sense).

How to veneer and shape a right angle?

First you need to glue the first tile and set it in level. The trimmed edge will “fly out” beyond the plane of the wall.

Then immediately you need to glue the second (reciprocal) tile on the other side of the corner. While the glue is fresh and amenable to adjustment, you need to form a beautiful right angle.

And so we gradually move up, row by row.

An important point!

Before tiling the corner, make sure your walls are vertical.

Because if the walls are at least a little overwhelmed outward, then without steps the corner will no longer converge. And this is not very beautiful, believe me! And you will not cover it up with anything or make up.

1. Cut the tiles with a roller tile cutter

The easiest and most reliable way. Any roller (machine tool) tile cutter has:

1. A ruler that allows you to cut off up to 6-8 cm without additional marking. The set also includes a retractable ruler (not shown in photo 1) and the right angle is maintained during cutting:

Photo 1. Placing tiles in a tile cutter.

2. Elastic tile pads glued to the metal body to prevent the tiles being cut from slipping and allow the tiles to land softly.

3. A tab that allows you to split the cut tile along the cut mowing line.

4. And most importantly. A large lever (special thanks to Archimedes, because such a tile cutter is often called mechanical) and a comfortable handle (almost invisible in photo 2) for cutting and breaking the cut tiles:

Photo 2. Splitting tiles cut with a tile cutter.

As a result, cutting the tile takes a few seconds. It is enough to set the tile, once with force to hold the chisel, and then, slightly shifting the stops (light yellow in photo 2) press the lever. Everything and business, dust and noise. Minimum.

The essence of this amazing process is quite simple: by cutting through the glaze layer on the tile, even slightly, we not only reduce the tile thickness (usually tenths of a millimeter), but also create an area of ​​critical internal stresses. In particular the slit. This is the result of not only fracture, but also plastic deformation. When we press down on the lever, the force is transmitted through the stops to the right and left sides of the tile lying on the ledge. Such a tile is like a beam on one support. A ledge on which two forces act. The edges of the stops. In this case, tensile stresses arise in the upper zone of the tile (since the bending moment on the support is maximum), and even shear stresses. Accordingly, the longer the stops, the easier it is to break the tile (the same lever rule applies here). And if the stops are wide enough, then the load transfer to the tile will be more even. Theoretically, if the stops are equal in width and length to the parts of the tile to be cut, then the tile can be not cut at all, but immediately broken. However, in practice, tiles are required in different sizes, and even transfer of the load to the cut tile is not at all necessary if the cut is made well. Therefore, the dimensions of the stops are usually not very large.

You can put the tile cutter when working on any more or less flat surface, you can also cut right on the floor.

However, the roller tile cutter also has disadvantages:

1. Guides for the cutter. As a rule, pipes that are quite easily deformed, respectively, the cutter does not always follow the intended mowing line. In addition, when cutting, the tile rests on the ledge and on the edge of one of the elastic pads, so the angle between the cutter and the tile surface is not 90 °. If the deviation of 1-2 mm from the intended size does not bother you much, then you can ignore this drawback. However, if you make additional spacers of such a height so that the tile rests on them more than on the ledge during cutting, then this problem can be partially solved. And cutting with additional spacers is much more convenient. But before splitting the tiles, the additional spacers must be removed by themselves.

2. When working in a dusty room (and where ceramic tiles are laid, as a rule, it is always dusty), the guides become clogged with dust and the cutter does not slide on them as well as a new one. Therefore, the guides must be periodically wiped and sometimes lubricated.

3. The metal stops of the lever must also have an elastic sheath so that splitting does not damage the face of the tile. However, such elastic shells are not always included in the tile cutter kit, and sometimes they can simply get lost. In such cases, I simply paste over the surface of the stops with masking tape.

4. Since the load during breaking is transmitted unevenly, it is not always possible to split off a strip with a width of more than 1.5-2 cm, especially if the tile is long enough.

5. Floor tiles are usually thicker and stronger than wall tiles, so you need to use more force to cut them. At the same time, the roller on which the roller cutter is put on wears out quite quickly (if the tile cutter is cheap), and the guides become loose faster. Well, for porcelain stoneware, a roller tile cutter is generally not suitable.

6. Large dimensions of the machine tool tile cutter. The larger the tile cutter, the easier and more convenient it is to work with it. However, to buy a large tile cutter for one renovation in an apartment, and then store it forever in the BAL-KON or in the garage. Not very nice.

5. Relatively high price. A mechanical tile cutter costs from 10 to 70, depending on the size, manufacturer and the availability of additional devices, such as a swivel ruler that allows you to cut tiles at different angles, a compass for cutting holes.

2. Cut the tiles with a mini tile cutter

Miniature tile cutters or, as they are also called: “tile tongs”, in comparison with a machine tile cutter, consist of solid disadvantages:

1. No ruler. Therefore, for marking it is necessary to have a tape measure or a metal ruler.

2. There is no guide. A carpenter’s corner or a metal ruler can serve as a guide, however, metal products can also slide along the surface of the tile and the cut can also turn out not along the mark.

3. The overhang for breaking the tiles is very short, and the stops are not so long.

4. The length of the lever is also less, which means that more efforts must be applied to break the tiles.

5. Since the load on the tile during breaking is transmitted almost in the form of concentrated forces, then chipping off a strip less than 3-4 cm wide with a mini-tile cutter is a problem.

Nevertheless, the main advantage of the miniature tile cutter. Its small size and weight. Also, the price of a mini-cutter is less: from 3 to 15.

Splitting

Since ceramic tiles are similar in their properties to glass, you can cut the tiles with an ordinary glass cutter, and then break off the necessary or unnecessary part of the tile, as when working with glass. Once (back in Soviet times) I did just that, sometimes I cut my hands in blood, trying to break off a rather narrow strip of tiles. However, there are now more convenient tile cutting tools. Now you can always:

How to cut tiles with a tile cutter. Step by step and with photos.

How to cut tiles mechanical tile cutter , has already been briefly described and shown on this site.

At first glance, there is nothing complicated about this. But in any business, there are details. The devil, as you know, is in the details.

Cutting in a straight line is not particularly difficult. Having to cut out the tiles with the letter “G” is somewhat confusing.

So usually you have to cut tiles on the slopes and around various hatches, doors.

Step-by-step cutting of a piece of tile.

Previously, using a square and a marker, it is necessary to mark 3 corner points of the piece to be cut. Sometimes a short wedge and a pencil are enough for marking. (AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE).

Run the cutting wheel of the tile cutter along two lines, according to the markings.

Cut the short line of the cut with the angle grinder. The cut-off wheel must be designed for cutting ceramic tiles (this is always indicated on the disc packaging). The cut-off wheel, when cutting, should not be located along the mowing line indicated by the tile cutter, but along the edge, on the side of the cut (unnecessary) piece.

All these complications are necessary so that the cutting wheel does not leave chips on the enamel.

If the tile is “very budget-friendly,” as in the picture, the enamel will bounce off even when cutting with a new wheel and an expensive tile cutter.

Part of the cut made by an “angle grinder”

After a short cut of the angle grinder has been made, the tile must be installed with the long side on the tile cutter, exactly along the line previously drawn with the wheel, and broken off with the handle of the tile cutter.

The lever (with a cut-off roller) for breaking tiles, must be installed at the beginning or at the end of the tile, 2-3 cm back from the edge of the tile.

Setting the lever of the tile cutter when pressing on the cutting line

This way you can cut tiles up to 12-15mm thick. But not every tile cutter.

Cheap tile cutters, with two pipe guides, bend and cannot break, often, ordinary porcelain stoneware. The tool shown in the photo can cut tiles up to 18mm. Only in this case, it is necessary to make cuts on both sides of the tile.

After a piece of tile is broken off, it is necessary to refine the corner with a cutting wheel.

The whole process is completed by sanding the cut edges with a float with sandpaper. This operation is especially important when the cut part of the tile is not covered with anything.

Processing of the cut end of the tile

When it is not possible to install a tile cutter on a table or workbench, then they work directly on the floor. With a significant amount of undercutting, the knees begin to hurt. This can be avoided by placing a 5 cm sheet of styrofoam next to the tool. This will not only create comfort for the knees, but also help to trim large tiles.

1. How to cut corrugated tiles?

An electric tile cutter is most suitable for trimming corrugated tiles. This is the case when it is superior to mechanical (my opinion).

With a slight tuberosity of the tile, the last version of the tool is also quite suitable.

But the more relief the tile has, the more difficult it is to break with the lever along the mowing line of the roller cut. Therefore, the cutting wheel should draw as much line as possible for all irregularities. Then there is a chance that the tile will break along the cut line.

And the smaller the cut piece, the less chance for a successful cut. As you can see below, half of the tiles always break successfully.