Thread: Cutting Ceramic Tiles

If your tiling you new home then you are going to see some of the following tools in action, sadly rooms and walls are not made to fit the tiles so most edgetiles will need cutting, if you need just to take 1 or 2mm off the edge of a tile and are in the UK the easiest way is to rub the edge on the pavement outside, sadly this doesn't work in Thailand so you need to grind the 1 or 2mm off using an angle grinder.Before cutting you do need to mark the tile with a non permanent marker pen, tiles with patterns on can only be layed one way, so remember that when your measuring and marking them.

Skillsaw

Lovely power tools, great for cutting marble and granite, these come with a gravity fed water feed but this is not needed for ordinary ceramic tiles, quick easy and noisy, but extremely accurate.

These cost from around 3,000baht for a good model in Thailand, ie bosch etc.

Here is a video of a skillsaw being used.

Angle grinder

Every builder has a few of these in Thailand, none have the safety guards though, nice and light and easy to use, good for cutting curves.

These cost from around 2,200baht for a good model, the discs for both the angle grinder and the skillsaw are the same fitting and cheap diamond cutting discs cost around 100baht, these are more than good enough for ordinary ceramic tiles, for porcelain tiles and other really hard tiles it is better to buy better quality cutting wheels.

Here is a video of a angle grinder being used.

Standard tile cutter

These tile cutters are the most popular way of cutting tiles in Thailand, quick and easy to use, when cutting tiles with these you just need to score the glaze and then snap the tile, if you are only cutting a few mm off the end of the tile you will need to use sharp pincers to break off the unwanted bit after scoring the tile with the tile cutter, the unwanted bits need to be broken off in small pieces, don't try to break it off from the middle in one piece.

The cutting wheels for these are available from most hardware stores and the tile cutters start from just under 2,000baht.

In this picture you can see the working parts of the tile cutter, the base consists of 2 rubber mats, you can replace these with cheap old carpet and glue when they fall off, the "V" upside down bar is where the tile will be scored and what it rests on so when you clamp down on it with the arm handle thing it helps make that the breaking point on the tile, the tatty old blue bit of metal is what actually pressures the tile when you push down on the arm.

So all you need to do with these tile cutters is pull the arm back, put the marked tile in the beast lined up, push the arm forward to lightly score the tile, bring the arm half way back and press downwards to break the tile at its newly created weak point, now all you have to do is remember which piece is the piece you want and which is the rubbish

Here is a video of a tile cutter being used.