How To Cut Tiles Without Power Tools

hi and welcome to another video by get it done home repairs today we're going to talk about how to cut ceramic tiles if you do with a backsplash or if you do with any kind of tile work whether it's a bathroom a kitchen the floors whatever at some point you're gonna need to cut tiles to make them fit where you need them to to go so I'm gonna bring you in slightly to show you a project that I'm working on and what I need to do to cut a tile to make it fit properly but I just want to explain to you what you're going to need to do that there's there's a couple of different ways you can one you can go and you can get yourself what's called a wet saw it actually has water in it you can use it has a blade that actually rotates and they've cuts the tile for a perfectly straight cut but if you're doing small cuts and you don't need a wet saw you can pick up a small tile cutter it's a hand-operated unit you can pick them up in just about any store you can actually take a look at my amazon store below and you can see it in my amazon store as well this particular tile cutter I've had for a while so I'm not pushing one tile cutter over another but this is the one that I happen to use for smaller projects it works really well I'm going to show you where I need to cut the tile the dimensions I'm gonna need and then we're going to go ahead and we're going to cut the tile and I'll show you exactly how to do it so do you have a perfect cut what you want to do when you when you cut a tile you want to make sure you know what let's go inside I'll explain the inside where I'm gonna cut it come on take a walk okay this is the tile that I need to cut right inside here to fit in that spot right there so what we know I know what I measured this already is one in seven eighths and it's off around two inches up underneath the hood right here so I know I need to have the tile it's going to be two inches this way and it's going to be an inch and 7/8 this direction here so what we're going to do is we're going to make sure we don't cut the tile where the clean end is here we're gonna make sure we do our cut on this side and we're going to do our cut up on this side where it's not really gonna be seen alright so let's go in the end garage we're gonna mock it out and then we're going to make that cut and I'll show you how easy how easy it is okay so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about how to mock a tile a tile itself is actually when you try the marker with a pen a pencil it's sometimes it doesn't really stay very well it wipes away very easily but you can use a marker and a marker stays a little bit better and then you just use a damp paper towel or something you're gonna wipe it right off alright so now what we know is we know we need a 2 inches high and we needed one in 7 8 1 and 7/8 inches wide so what we're going to do is going to come over here we're going to take our tile right here we're going to mark it 1 in 7 8 we're gonna mark at 2 inches you're just going to draw a straight line not that it matters you can use anything to draw a straight line of course and then this is how I want to cut the tile I want to cut it out here and here this end here is not going to be cut because this is going to touch up against another tile and this end over here is not going to be cut because that's going to be touching up against another tile the end we want to cut is the end that's going to be hidden in the kit in the cabinet here and behind the hood up here alright so let's cut that tile and I'll show you how that actually works as well ok so this is how a tile cutter works obviously down on the bottom underneath here you have the unit that cuts the or the wheel that cuts the tile itself and this centerpiece is raised up right here because that's what you're gonna use to snap the tile now when you when you look at the tile cutter itself down on the bottom right here you see these little pieces that come down that's what's gonna be used to snap a tile alright so let's do this real slow and I'm going to show you exactly how to do it first thing we're going to do is we're going to take our handle lift it up put our tile in here the way we want to cut it we're gonna bring this down here so as touching just like that you can see okay just get you a little closer maybe okay hold the tile up against a stopper right here you take your tool and you push very lightly it's like a glass cutter and you just strike it a couple of times just like that you don't have to go TV you just you just score it a couple of times then you hold your tiles straight you put your tool on it like this and you push down and that'll snap the tile and as you can see it's that the tile right off right here but now we need to cut this one right here as well so we're going to take this now and we're gonna put it back in here like this we're gonna bring our tool down onto the line again you push it up against a stop in the back right here hold it with your finger and you strike it two or three times and you just really put a slight little a little cut it into the tile itself show you first see you're just putting a slight little strike across the top of the tile right there and then we just take it put the tile cutter on here like this keep all wheel off so it's not touching anything and just give it a little bit of a push it just cuts it right off nice and clean along the line all right so let's go inside now let's wipe this off here this cleans over very easily you just use a rag a damp rag and the cleans are regular just like this you just wipe it off like that and it cleans it right off okay all right let's go inside and then let's see if it fits okay let me show you one more time how to cut the tile just in case you didn't catch it so good the other time all right what we'll do is we'll take our tile and we'll put on marks where we want to cut it all right so we have all marks on it now we're gonna bring it over to our cuddle lift the blade up put it in here so it's touching up against the back right here then you bring down to cut the cutting wheel till it touches into the tile and then you just run with a couple of times two or three times is usually enough just like that and then you bring you a tile cutter off you put these two 52 feet right up on here and push and it snaps the tile right where you needed it to be cut like that and then we would cut it on this other spot right here just lift it up you want to make sure that there's no foreign matter laying up on the top here as well put it in here well on it I just strike it again two or three times just to put a strike I'll market it and then you push and snaps the tile right off so that you have a perfect cut here and you have a perfect cut here and that's how that tile kind of works okay all right so this is our tile now let's take it and put it up in here but we can see it fits right in here like this and like this now obviously it's gonna go just like that we all gonna put our mastic on there of course to hold the tile of place and we'll put it back in there all right but you want to make sure that the cut end is always on the side where it's not touching up against another tile which will be against a cabinet right here and up there it's hidden behind the hood itself okay okay and that's how you we cut the tile now if it wasn't cut properly you can go in and cut it again so that's always a possibility but you won't be able to make little tiny cuts such as a small little cut like that you won't be able to do it that's where they West's all comes in handy okay it is inevitable that at some point whenever you're doing a tiling job you may not be able to get by with just making a straight cut to cut the the tile off like here you may not be able to make a straight line you may need to cut something like this at an angle to cut something out to fit around something an outlet or whatever and if you need to make these cuts than that so with the with just the hand operated so of the manual one will not work for you with this kind of a cut you will need a wet saw to make these cuts inside there or they make another tool that you can use is called a nibbler we can get in there we can actually chip away at the tile and cut it out so let me grab the tool and I'm going to show you how that tool works too okay now that tool it's a hand operated tool like this the key with this tool here is when you're actually cutting this tile here to cut out a section of it you don't want to take big chunks out like that if you take a big chunk out like that it's going to crack all the way across but if you take out small pieces you can take the tile down to what you need all right I will tell you this to make sure your way I protection because sometimes these pieces do go flying around okay so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna come in here like this and we're gonna do hope we can see you know there's no me and so you can watch what I'm doing okay so what you do now is you take care of your pliers like this your your nibbler - cheering away at the tile and you just take small little pieces out at a time you don't want to go big chunks because it would take a big chunk out you're gonna wind up you know cracking a tile of course so we just come in here just like this here and we just take all the little pieces at a time just like that you okay so as you can see with the nibbler it does take a while to get in there now I am going to chip away a little bit more at this year but at this point you want to be really really careful because you can crack that tile very easily okay but that's pretty much that's pretty much how you can do it using the the small nibblers to get in there and make those cuts now obviously you can get in here with that stone and you can clean this up a little bit so that you can have a nice straight even corner here as well the stone it's just a dissimilar to the stone you would use when you show up with a knife and you can clean it up like that okay so that's pretty much it that's how you would use the nibbler make sure you use safety glasses when you work on this because although these little fragments that you cut off they will go flying around all right so that's another alternative you needed to cut out a small section of tile without using a wet saw alright so let's get inside let's finish this project and let's wrap this job up and get it done okay so as you can see cutting tiles is really not that difficult I will tell you this with a burr the tile that is a small tile cutter like this you will not be able to make small little cuts like if you needed to cut off just a little bit more off of the tile itself than this tool here will not work for you and then you better walk with a wet soil because of West soil you can make the small intricate cuts this sore is only good with this tile cutter is only good for larger cuts that are on here anything probably like three quarters of an inch to a half inch in size would work better the small cuts like that will just be very jagged alright now with this soil with this tile cutter you do get a little bit of a jagged edge over here is not perfectly smooth there's two ways you can remedy that one you can go and get a wet sore or rent a little wet sore if needed and you'll get a perfectly smooth cut they do sell a file that you can buy in the big-box stores that you can file down the tile here so that you can have a nice perfect perfect cut is not actually it's a file is more like a stone that you would actually rub it with to make it nice and smooth all right but that's it so this job is really not as difficult as you think just strike it three or four times two even two or three times just to put a straw groove in the glazed palm of the tile itself now I will tell this to you as well you always want to cover on the shiny side of the tile you never want to do anything on the back of the tile the tile in the back you can't you can't strike a straight line in there because the most of the time it's a little bit bumpy so you'll want to make your strikes up on the on the front of the tile itself on the glazed part of the tile or the shiny part of the tile all right this job is going to get done I'm going to put that tile in place and a kitchen project will be it will be finished all right as always thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one

Channel: Get It Done Home Repair

Views: 17,595

Rating: 4.8014183 out of 5

Keywords: how do i cut tiles, how do i cut tiles without power tools, how do i cut tiles by hand, how do i cut tiles without a wet saw

Id: RW0GG-5Y51o

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020