How to Cut Concrete Landscaping Blocks by Hand

hey everybody if you clicked on this i'm guessing you want to know how to split one of these blocks in half and you want to know fast so i'm going to get right into it so you're going to need two things you're going to need a sledgehammer this is a four pound sledge i like it i don't swing it very hard though so you could probably get away with a two pound and swing it heavier and you need this this is a masonry chisel do not use a wood chisel just because you have it in the garage use a masonry chisel about 10 bucks at the hardware store sledge 15 to 20 bucks at the hardware store okay let's get into it and first thing i'm going to do because i want to hit it in the middle just so you know i'm super detail oriented so i also have a straight edge and a measuring device here because i want to make sure i hit it right in the middle if you don't really care you can just kind of roughly start on the next step but here we go is i'm going to mark the two spots the two middle spots on it and uh draw a line between it so about 11 inches so get a spot right there five and a half i'll put a mark whoops side note eye protection always wear eye protection all right uh on the back side we're talking about about eight inches here so i'm going to find four inches i'm going to hit it again and then i'm going to score a straight line between these two and then i'm going to start fracturing the block and i'm not trying to break it here i'm really just trying to tell the block where i want it to break putting in those little fracture lines and i'm not hitting it that hard again little pieces are flying everywhere so make sure you get that eye protection on all right i'm gonna flip it over to the same thing again if you're not too concerned about where it breaks you just want to roughly get it in half you can skip all my crazy measurements and then uh again just going to really tell the block where i want it to break i'm not trying to break it yet i like to go over it twice and this is super overkill but i do the same thing on the uh on the ends again just because i am so uh i guess i'm just such an engineer score it and tell it where i want it to break and boy that looks crooked oh well i'll do the same thing here all right last side here just telling it where to break all right i told it where to break all the way around so now i'm gonna actually try to break it so these uh hits are gonna be a little bit harder a little bit firmer and i'm not swinging it that hard you can see how closely i'm gripped to the head and that's just because i don't spend a lot of time swinging a hammer so i'm not very accurate all right i'm going to turn it over and i should have enough damage done on that other side that this side is just it's going to break and there it is right there and i was kind of curious how long it would take and so even with my uh over explanation of the whole thing and the specific uh measurements ended up being about five minutes so probably break each one of these in two and a half three minutes if you're just trying to drive through them and that's it that's all there is to it that's all you wanted to know you can stop watching now there was one thing i wanted to show you and that is what happens when you do this with a wood chisel so when i first did this i thought it was going to be hard to find a masonry chisel and so i didn't go to the store and buy one it was right there like i said it was like eight or nine bucks uh so i just got one but before that i just had a wood chisel and i was like ah this is the same thing it's metal we can this will work and so i did it with a wood chisel uh the the first few times and uh not only do you burn out your wood chisel but it takes forever i'm going to go ahead and cut this one and i'm going to time this one too because i'm kind of curious i'm not going to be as specific on this though as far as where the halfway point is because i'm not gonna save this brick so i can't bring myself to just randomly cut this thing i'm gonna do the same thing measure this out this time with the wood chisel so i'm trying to use the same technique here and boy i can really tell the difference in how solidly it's hitting i think it's just that plastic handle absorbs so much energy all right i think i've gone around that thing with a double hit on each line so now you know this is where i would try to break it so i'm taking some bigger swings i know from experience though that these are mostly fruitless but i'm going to keep swinging away [Applause] this is so painful i had to put the glove on because the shockwave is going through this handle or too much i'm really swinging hard on this this is i think harder than i was hitting the other one i don't like that i'm going so slow but i'm getting tired i've been at this for 10 minutes now oh i did it 10 minutes and 40 seconds broke pretty clean broke pretty clean i did get a lot of extra fractures in there so you guys don't just use a wood chisel because you have one around the house takes forever i'm gonna be feeling that probably for days and just go get yourself a masonry chisel it is a huge benefit cuts through these things like butter thanks for watching

Channel: Colorado Astro Adventures

Views: 14,482

Keywords: splitting, split, cutting, cement, bricks

Id: qFTWPR94CNs

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021