How to Cut Tile for Beginners

all right so i'm outside today working on my patio and fire pit yes those videos are coming real soon but first we wanted to go through this because i had to set up my saw today we're doing some led stone work that'll be in our other video but i wanted to just take a minute because i've been collecting some tiles over the last couple weeks just so that i can do a video where i can show you all the tips and tricks for cutting ceramic versus porcelain versus lead stone versus glass versus this stuff which is one inch thick structural porcelain it is crazy tough now i've got some basic tools here i got a lot of advice and i think i'm going to be able to help you navigate which tools it is that you need to buy for your situation so we're going to dive into this the world of how to cut stone and tile that way at least you have all the tips and tricks and you're not going to disappoint yourself by using the wrong tool for the wrong job okay a lot of times like let's just take glass for example it's a very difficult material to work with if you're not using a wet saw you're going to be disappointed every single time don't go into that rabbit hole of oh that's not bad or that's good enough it's never good enough it'll always look like junk and everyone's going to call you out on it all right so rent the tool if you have to but never cut glass unless you're using the right tool if you don't believe me i'm going to demonstrate right now here's a few other different options that you have for cutting glass so a lot of people will go and they'll buy one of these now this is really getting old and it's not been maintained well but it still functions great and has a nice wheel and it's the scratch tool and the basic idea of a scratch tool is you scratch your stone put pressure on it and you break it and that looks like it did a pretty decent job actually did a really decent job it's not supposed to do a good job the thing about a scratch tool and i'll just keep i'll do another couple more here on this other different different type of stone here there we go that's more indicative of it okay you see the top of that tile this glass while it's being broken nine out of ten times will shatter okay and sometimes just the backside will tear off and shatter but look at the look at the back line how straight is that now i'm going to tell you right now because it's glass when you put that on a wall and you add your grout and you put a piece of trim here all right the light is going to shine through the glass and reflect differently after the grout is done and all of your edges will then look horrible okay when you cut it with the wet saw you get a nice clean edge and a straight back okay so the question is well what else can i use to cut glass right can i use my nippers hmm good question let's find out let's say you're we're doing a backsplash you got to cut around your electrical nope that don't work so you now you don't need to bother trying that what if i use my grinder maybe let's have a peek i know a lot of you were watching while i was cutting and yeah you know you saw that the grinder it had a sudden action it didn't cut through that just just the weight of the grinder sitting on that glass shut and broke it up now the edges also have a different contour you see there's polish and then there's rough glass even if you get it the cut clean it's going to be nasty and you're going to see it on your cuts the only other technique you can use is you can cut this stuff upside down all right so now you'll probably see it really well here now you can see the the glass itself has actually changed the texture and its contour and the light deflects differently it doesn't matter which tool you use in this situation glass can only be cut with a wet saw now if you've hired somebody to come into your house and do work on your tile and he doesn't have a wet saw to cut your glass on i'm not going to tell you what to do with that contractor but i'm going to suggest maybe you send them back to the store to rent the proper tool all right there's just no such thing as oh it'll be fine it'll be good enough just use the right tool now moving on from glass the history of tile we used to have really small tile okay subway tile or four by fours and back in those days um generally speaking guys could use this tool right here it's a tile nipper all right and with ceramic especially because it was nice and soft and that was kind of the material of choice now is this a ceramic or porcelain that's a porcelain that one's a ceramic by the way porcelain will always say porcelain on the tile nine times out of ten anyway this one's made in spain this is definitely a ceramic i'm going to just show you if i'm installing this and i'm going to say here let's say i have a shower valve and i need to cut a circle here in the style okay can't use the straight tool can't use the wet saw can use nips and so what they would do is they would get over here and they would start cutting away at the tile a little bit at a time okay and i know this is almost ridiculous but if you're putting in a bathroom and you have one shower valve and a toilet a tub spout and then a shower spout and you're putting in ceramic this is all you need and a lot of ceramic isn't even that thick this is actually designed to be a floor tile and you'll see with a little bit of practice you can get pretty proficient with this right up to your line and the secret is the more material you put in your nipper the more it's going to cut so you can get real precise like if i'm only putting in just the tip here do you see that okay max oh yeah okay i can do detail work on this now that's about as good a cut as you're ever going to need all right i know that almost sounds crazy but if you get proficient with this tool 15 bucks you can buy ceramic and you can cut everything the only thing you can't get is a decent straight cut right when you get to the ceiling or you're outside corners if you're dealing with just ceramic and you're a diy-er if you have nippers for your rounds and a tool like this then you can do just about anything and get a nice straight scratch and then you put the pedal okay keep the wheel off the edge of the tile and you just simply press down on the handle and up on the bars and it'll break that's it okay there's your straight edge then you can put your plastic edging or your metal edging up and it'll look amazing generally speaking in the old days everything was four by four then it went up to six by six oh then it was 12 by 12 right no problem this tile does all of that but as soon as we got into 12 by 24 now this tile was this tool was limited because i can't do that long line with this machine and what you'll see is when you're out there shopping they sell this material this tool in 24 36 4 feet 6 feet it gets into some pretty good dollars okay and for a diy or if you want to go with a 12 by 24 and you've got to do this cut you might find out that renting a tool like this from the home depot might be a good solution for you so let me just do a little bit of a recap if you're doing glass you got to have a wet saw okay if you're doing ceramic you can use nippers and you can use a scratch tool and yes you can even rent the longer scratch tool for the 12x24 and the higher quality the material that you're working with the the better it'll cut okay but if you want to be guaranteed that when you cut it's going to be perfect because the scratch tool has a certain flaw rate on it usually about one out of every six or seven cuts you're going to get a broken corner okay to guarantee a good result you can get the wet saw for the ceramic as well not a problem remember the bigger the stone the bigger the tool okay now as soon as we move into to porcelains we got to throw these out no good you can't use nippers with porcelain you can still use a scratch tool with porcelain though however all right i'll show you that now this is a porcelain and this is a wall tile this is not a floor tile you might find that a floor tile will be a little bit more difficult to maneuver okay takes a lot more force and this is going to see this this is not uncommon uneven cuts all right so if you're using porcelain and you want to use one of these scratch tools good for the floor because you're still going to be using base trim and everything else probably not a great idea for doing wall tile all right so if you're going to use porcelain on the wall you're going to upgrade to the wet saw you will see that there's a significant difference in the thickness okay this is a porcelain all these are porcelain but they come in different thicknesses okay wall tile floor tile outdoor structural floor tile now you'll see that there's a sliding scale the larger the material the better tools you're going to need so considering what your tool access is when you're planning out your renovation can be the key to success if you don't have a lot of tools and you want to keep it simple go with subway tile for your bathroom piece of cake you can get ceramic subway tile grab the nippers and a 30 cutting tool like this and you'll be off to the races and these tools will last more than two bathrooms in the kitchen backsplash no problem as soon as you get into floor tile though you got to upgrade your tools now we're going to show you my favorite tool for cutting stone and here's why this one tool can cut everything except glass this will cut every single situation you're going to need to cut i'm going to show you all the different demonstrations it's a grinder with a porcelain blade all right and it doesn't just do tile it does even more than that so we'll talk about that too but let's just show some demonstrations here real quick how to cut all right so just before i go showing you how to use a grinder to do cutting i wanted to talk about the difference between porcelain ceramic because other than the price okay ceramic is going to be a lower cost and the reason is it's softer on a hardness scale ceramics are one or two porcelains are threes to fives okay and the scale is out of five so what you're going to have to realize is the harder the material you're cutting the better the tool you're going to need even a scratch tool on a floor tile out of porcelain it can be a lot of effort okay and it might drive you crazy and be just too much work go ahead and rent the tools all right or if you're smart like i teach make sure grinder is one of the five tools that you own and if you haven't seen that video we'll put a link in the video description gotta check this out this tool is so versatile it'll blow your mind it's not something most people think about out of the gate but after today you'll realize how valuable this is ceramic has a crazy expansion and contraction rate let's face it we've all seen a brand new house right you walk in the front door especially in the northern climates and the ceramic tiles there and what a 90 of these floors all have in common they all have a cracked tile right where the heat register is because in the winter time the cold air is blowing in and the hot air is blowing in and the tile shatters i just can't handle that expansion and contraction system going on with porcelain it doesn't have the same dramatic expansion and contraction and they do manufacture what's called rectified porcelain that particular material is used outside it's also getting really popular now that they're making the tiles larger and larger and larger one of the things the industry is trying to get away from is having so much expansion and contraction that the tiles delaminate from the substrate and so they're going bigger rectified stone so things don't move so much and again those products are extremely hard okay so when you're at the store shopping you're going oh honey look at the ceramic great deal also easy to cut the porcelain's nice it's a little more expensive and you're going to need better tools yes and you're going to need special cement and even better tools again so consider all of those different graduating costs and experiences you might want to stay away from a really expensive stone if you don't have a lot of experience installing it until you've done some more basic projects now here's my weapon of choice this particular tool can cut anything anytime anywhere inside outside it's the one thing that you can cut all the time except for glass okay you still can't cut glass with this grinder i mean i've seen guys try and get away with it but it just never seems to work out now i'm going to show you a couple of different cutting techniques okay first of all let's say we'll go through a bunch of scenarios and show you how the grinder works let's say uh i need an outlet for a wall plug okay there's my square now i'm not going to cut the little notch for where the screw goes because i buy special plugs and if you haven't seen that video put a video link in the description about the special plugs that you need when you're using tile so you don't have to do the extra notching and almost always will end in a disaster because people just don't know how to measure properly all right so step one you're going to cut through from the top surface until the blade which is round gets to the corners okay we'll do that on all four sides and then i'll show you step two [Applause] [Applause] okay so step one i'm really just drawing a line with the grinder on the surface okay i'm getting through the glaze i'm defining the space but i'm cutting all the way through on the long sides all right here's why the secret here now is if i'm looking at the tile i can see this line and i line up the blade underneath okay visually i can see the top of the tile and where the blade is and what i'm just going to do a quick mark in the stone [Applause] so now you can see my line's all defined all right i got all these lines so now i'll plunge through from the back side [Applause] [Applause] hey i got it right oh and and now the secret here is to finish the cut from the back side okay until all the material is removed without coming through the surface on the front this is not as hard as it looks all right and that's how you can cut a perfect square in a piece of tile okay great great system to have it's all about patience and understanding the round blade and cut from both sides be patient take your time and anybody can do this all right and for everybody who wants to know what the blade is here it is boom now it has a rating on the back uh this is pearl they have their own ratings okay they have a they have another level of grinder blade i'm telling right now you probably never need it i love the level four it cuts everything i've ever had to deal with imagining that maybe if you were using granite you'd have to go to number five that's about it okay so if you need it you can look around if you live in ottawa you can get this at dragona my favorite tile supply store all right shout out to the boys over at dragona and if if you have any need for anything to do with materials for flooring you can go there they sell underpads and carpet tack strips and all the different cements and base trims and even pails all right cool so let's get on with the next thing the grinder it can also cut circles yeah i don't know if anybody's ever seen this before i'm sure there's a couple of guys on youtube who've cut a circle in a tile okay now just a note for everybody out there who has to cut tile for your toilet the existing flange is seven inches around okay and if you measure let's say you're here all right and let's say this is your toilet flange and if you measure to the middle of the flange okay from two different directions you can translate that information onto your tile put that little dot on your tile there's your center mark maybe a big dot you can see it on the camera okay and then take one of your leftover blades from your skill saw this is a great trade tip all right done this blade is seven and a quarter inches now if you don't walk around with an extra toilet flange on you that'll make a perfect hole it's just a little bit wider than the toilet which is fine because most toilets when they sit on the base even if they have a really narrow base will extend out about three quarters of an inch on each side you're not dealing with a lot of room here so as a homeowner if you're cutting a hole in your floor resistant temptation just cut the tile in half and then do a big square notch because you're going to have a hole in your floor learn how to use your grinder instead all right first thing you want to do is you want to cut through the glaze of the stone okay and get that out of the way so that the glaze isn't chipping around because glazed chips they'll actually cut your skin i'm not going to tell you that your circle has to be perfect but it has to be bigger than the flange just a little bit because whenever you measure and you set it in most people make a mistake with the grout line they forget to add or subtract it when they're measuring all right and so by cutting it just a little bit bigger it gives you that flexibility to put the tile in with confidence the first time and you don't have to go back and forth and cut over and over and over again now the secret when you're cutting tile is this if you cut with the grinder straight as you're making your turns you're going to make your hole really wide and you'll end up with an eight inch hole and then you're going to have a problem you don't have an eight inch hole okay it's just way too big now when you're grinding you want to use the face of the grinder blade not the not this cutting edge you'll see when they designed this thing the actual cutting surface is is what three eighths of an inch front and back okay and you can cut off the side too if you cut your stone and it's a little bit crooked and you want to fix it you don't have to cut it like this you can you can put an angle on it by cutting off the side so you understand how the tool works and it gives you a lot more flexibility so what we're going to do is we're going to cut this now we're going to cut it almost flat and we use that little edge that i put in there as the guide and then what you're going to end up doing is cutting on a bit of an angle all around that hole so that the surface the hole is the perfect size and there won't be any material in the way okay so now you'll see when i'm cutting this way i'm actually cutting the material off from the inside of the stone right here so the the groove is getting wider but the outside perimeter of the cut is not getting any bigger and that's the secret that's how you maintain control of what you're doing so full disclosure this this was done with porcelain tile and it's pretty hard right here's my tile now let's see how close i was to my original dimension wow perfect all right now you'll notice i cheated a little bit when i got near the end instead of going on the angle i was able to stand the blade up and just cut through all right and again if you have any issues here watch what i'll show you you can clean all this up real easy off the side of the blade i'm just saying i know it takes a few minutes but you only have one toilet in the room i would think so that's pretty darn effective huh all right now we've been able to cut perfect rectangles perfect circles of course it's just now it's it's just way too easy right if you have to cut off a corner of a tile then using the grinder is a piece of cake and i know everybody wants to see this so i'm going to show you right now what about cutting this stuff right here right it just so happens i need a piece that is about six inches long by about three inches so one of the ways you can cut and i love using markers on tile when i'm cutting uh the pencil sometimes is just you know not good and you when you're on the wet saw having a marker is great just make sure you don't put too much mark on there some of these materials like if you have a glaze the marker will rub right off but this doesn't have a glaze you got to be somewhat careful so i'm going to show you now and we're cutting on a half inch piece of plywood that's my backer and i'll show you how to cut this really thick stone with the same grinder so now i'm just going to tell you my process here so you can watch as the tool works i'm not pushing into the stone and that's the key the tool weighs about a pound and a half let the blade do the work under its own weight okay just set it where you want it to go and let it bury itself and then pick it up and move it forward now if you've got to be that precise you can you can just use the blade to clean out the inside corner piece of cake and there we go and then the other question is well what about the big stone what about the straight cut because i don't even have the ability to use a wet saw on that right okay all right so i've got two marks i can actually take uh another one of these 40 pound stones and you want to be the glazed side up okay very key you'll notice in a minute why and i can just line up the marks and use the tile as the straight edge you don't need to use a marker or a pencil or anything use the grinder to create your line what we're going to do is we're going to instead of going flush which would risk damaging the edge here i'll just go on a 5 degree angle and i'll run that across and create my pencil line with the grinder now i can remove my stone now of course the more experience you have with this sort of thing the easier it is that actually makes a really nice line done it on the camera now don't go running away just yet i know you're tempted to because oh you think you've seen it all but here's the deal i've got a couple other different cutting techniques to show you i'm going to show you how to cut your lead stone right and for everybody who's wondering you know why don't you just use a drill bit to make a hole you can they do sell some really good drill bits nowadays made for porcelain ceramic the harder the stone you're using though the better quality bit you got to buy a good quality bit to cut through porcelain for a shower head hole for instance is going to run you almost 100 bucks all right so consider that i know you might want to get the bigger flange and cut a square that's what i do works every time now here we go here's my here's my porcelain there's my straight line i know it's straight because rectified porcelain always comes straight what i'm going to do is i'm going to basically just freehand this and let the groove that's there guide the tool my job is to keep it perpendicular okay and then you'll see that in my blade it actually comes to a point so the first scratch line is actually really thin after two more quick passes it'll get wider all right so it's very important that you consider that when you're doing your measuring let the blade do the work don't push don't pull so straight as an arrow now now when you start considering which tool is the best for the job you might be leaning this direction this wet saw here is actually a good deal it's just a couple hundred bucks right performs really well the table moves but it has this edge to keep things square i can't set a two foot tile on here it won't fit even if i do like right is that really the way that you want to be cutting and then all the way to the end these wet saws generally will do the job but they're not as flexible if you get into two or three foot stone it's just too big for the table all right this is a great tool up to a 24 by 24 but i'm not using it on these patio stones it's just too much material and it's just going to chew through that blade way too fast to get the same quality blade for a saw like this as a grinder it cost me like 250 bucks and i wasn't interested in spending that kind of money on a blade when i knew that the grinder was going to do the job just fine it takes a couple more minutes but i don't have a lot of cuts to do on a patio now let's get the wet saw back on and i'm going to show you how to cut your outside corner because this is not that tricky all we do on this saw is we have this adjustable blade height okay and i lift this up so that i can cut on that angle all right and you'll see that by the time i have an obstruction i'm all the way over here i can just take that stone and turn it around the other way piece of cake now there's one more trick i wanted to show you because when i started out in tile i had a small little yellow table because i was doing ceramic and they work great and it's a combination of this tool plus the nippers and i was able to cut just about anything with that and i'm going to show you how that works right now it's called the piano key cut all right here we go [Music] there we go that's cut and we could just take a piece of old tile oh glass not a good idea all right and break all the keys and then we take the nips and finish off the line and you know what for the most part that works pretty darn good now if you need an economical way to cut around floor grates and that sort of thing then that works okay you can have one saw set up and you can cut all your porcelain like that and you don't have to use the grinder that's another way to do those inside corners all right listen if any of this information was helpful make sure you like the video share with your friends ah don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't because we've got a lot of videos coming down the way especially dealing with this patio guys it's going to be amazing how to make an outdoor living space outdoor fire pit dining room table these videos are all coming real soon so don't miss out hit the subscribe button and notify the with the bell so that you get told when those videos are coming out and if you'd like to see some of our other videos that we make we got a bench series and in that bench series i'm going to share with you industry tips and tricks about when subject matter overload you the information to help you be the best contractor you can be see you soon

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 353,426

Rating: 4.929894 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, home improvement, how to, do it yourself, how to cut tile, cutting tiles, how to cut porcelain tile, how to cut tiles, tile cutting, renovation, how to cut ceramic tile, manual tile cutter, tile cutter, how to cut tiles without expensive tools, how to choose a tile cutter, how to cut tile with a tile cutter, how to cut tile with a manual tile cutter, how to cut tile with a grinder, how to cut tile with a wet saw

Id: aOxBqHNeOQ8

Length: 32min 28sec (1948 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020