If you decide to lay out the floor or walls in the bathroom or other rooms with ceramic tiles yourself, you will need a fairly large number of tools, including a tile cutter. How to choose the right tile cutter for the amount of work you need, as well as the type of tile or porcelain stoneware, we will try to tell in this article.
In general, tile cutters are manual (household and professional) and electric (professional). Electric tile cutters are typically used for very large jobs, such as when a team needs to tile a swimming pool complex where the total area of the future coating is hundreds of square meters. For the needs of an ordinary person, this is a very expensive tool and will not work. Typically, manual tile cutters are used in everyday life. We will talk about them.
Before buying and generally choosing one or another design of a manual tile cutter, it is worth evaluating several factors.
By the way, you can read about the types of manual tile cutters in our article: Manual tile cutter . A manual tile cutter has a number of advantages over electric tile cutters. First is the price, manual ones are much cheaper. Secondly, it is independent of electricity. Due to the absence of electrical circuits in the design, the manual tile cutter is safer and can be used in wet conditions, up to 90%.
It is also worth noting the small size of the manual tile cutter. Due to this, it does not require a lot of space to work with it, and the fact that it is light in weight, it is easy to move it from place to place. The weight of a manual tile cutter, depending on the design, ranges from 200 grams to 9 kg. Well, it is very easy to store it in the closet, along with other tools, it will take up quite a bit of space on the shelf.
Factors affecting the choice of tile cutter
1. The type of tile you choose to put in your home . Depending on the size of the tile, thickness, as well as the strength of the material. If the tiles are more than 10 mm thick, it is best to use a mechanical tile cutter. If the material is classic - thin tiles for walls, other types are also suitable: both roller and bearing. By the way, if you plan to cut only 8 mm thick tiles, you can take the smallest model with a light weight and a length of 40 cm. It is best to buy tiles before the tile cutter, otherwise you can make a mistake and have to buy a second tile cutter.
2. Scope of planned work. This parameter is very important, because if you buy a cheap tile cutter, it may turn out that the cutting roller will fail before you finish all the work. It should also be taken into account that the tile cutter is not a consumable item and it may be needed during the next repair. In the end, you can just sell it to a neighbor, dropping the price a little. Thus, it is best to buy a tile cutter, so to speak, “with a margin” for the required amount of work.
After you have carried out the evaluation work, you can proceed to the choice of the tile cutter itself. There are also a lot of subtleties, because it is not difficult to get confused in the choice of models. Below we will reveal those features that you need to pay attention to.
Features of different types of tile cutters
1. Tool holder guides. It is very important to immediately evaluate exactly how the guides are arranged. If you want the cut to be smooth and without chips, do not choose a tile cutter that has plastic rings in the design of the guides. They loosen quickly enough and the tile cutter starts to cut crookedly, and the number of chips on the cut increases. The best choice is a tile cutter, on which the cutting part is mounted on bearings.
Thanks to this design, the cut is very even, the stroke is smooth, and the durability of the tool is ensured for a very long time. Bearing steel is not a plastic ring for you.
2. The quality of the bed. The bed is essentially the base of the tool and it must be very strong and rigid. If it does not provide sufficient rigidity in the process of splitting the tile, the output will be a very large amount of marriage, since the fracture will not occur exactly along the cut line. We should not think about talking about the fact that over time the flimsy bed can bend and the tool will fail. This happens if thin steel is used in the structure. It can also affect the fact that the tile will not crack the first time due to the deflection of the frame.
3. Durable tool handle. This is an important element of the tile cutter, especially if you plan to cut thick and durable floor tiles of great thickness - for example, porcelain stoneware. If it is thin, it may bend in the process of pressing on the tile.
4. The length of the tile cutter. The smallest models are designed for cutting ordinary ceramic tiles and are 400 mm long. You can stop your choice on it only in one case, if you need to lay out one wall and you don’t need a tile cutter anymore. Thrifty owners take more versatile tile cutters, which are also suitable for cutting floor tiles and porcelain stoneware. The length of these tile cutters is 600 mm or more.
5. The presence of a goniometer. This is a very important "bells and whistles" in the tile cutter. With it, you can not only cut the tile at right angles to the existing edges, but also cut at different angles. As a rule, the protractor has the form of a rotary ruler.
6. The presence of a ballerina. A ballerina is a special device such as a compass for cutting circular holes of various diameters in a tile. They are usually cut out for sewer and water pipes, although it may also be needed for ventilation grills, which are often rounded.
In general, for homework, the average option at the price of a manual tile cutter with bearings, from 600 mm long, with a fairly powerful base with a swivel rail, is best suited. A model with the ability to cut circular holes is chosen by very demanding craftsmen. With a sufficiently large planned amount of work, you should immediately take care of additional cutting rollers. The fact is that if the roller becomes dull during operation, it is not sharpened, but simply changed.