Cutting drywall and lath and plaster?

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Dec 4, 2011
Messages
27
Any suggestions on a dustless way to cut drywall and/or lath and plaster?

Here's one scenario of older home having electrical and plumbing upgraded. Trades leaving holes around the house.

Currently I use a Fein multimaster with an extractor held close. (cuts better than a rotozip)

IMG_9209.jpg


Dustless drywall cutter?
 
Rotozip blows, I have one laying in my shop that hasn't been used in years.
The Fein works good. I use it like you holding the vac near
The Trion also works very well with the extraction attachment and blade hood. Only problem is once the blade hood is installed you can't see squat. Cutting along a line becomes difficult.
I usually draw lines and score with a knife to reduce chatter breakage along the cut lines
 
Yup, rotozip completely blows. I was trying not to put much of my own bias in the OP. It shreds the paper and makes a mess in plaster.

Sounds like we have similar procedures.

I'm hoping that maybe some members across the pond who have had both Festool and lath and plaster longer than North Americans may have some suggestions.
 
One of my customers got the vacuum attachment for the Multimaster and cut it back. He seemed pretty pleased with the results but I didn't see exactly how he did it.

Tom
 
Whenever I think "odd jobs" with Festool, I think LS130. It doesn't get the all the hoopla that some of the sportier and equally functional sanders get, but when you need it, it is a workhorse.

I wonder if Festool could design a mini sawzall like blade attachment for it that could be somehow shrouded to encourage reasonable extraction.

[smile]
 
I'm on a big remodel now that we've cut about 80 or so holes for all the electrical work.  Most of it has been plaster and wooden lath but there's also been some with metal lath and exterior walls with plaster on brick.  We've used a grinder with diamond blade and chase it with a vac.  That's brutal work.  I'd love for Festool to come out with a grinder with decent dust collection.
 
Tom Bellemare said:
One of my customers got the vacuum attachment for the Multimaster and cut it back. He seemed pretty pleased with the results but I didn't see exactly how he did it.

Tom

Would be curious what he did. That's essentially what I do by holding the hose and Fein at the same time.

Scott B. said:
Whenever I think "odd jobs" with Festool, I think LS130. It doesn't get the all the hoopla that some of the sportier and equally functional sanders get, but when you need it, it is a workhorse.

I wonder if Festool could design a mini sawzall like blade attachment for it that could be somehow shrouded to encourage reasonable extraction.

[smile]

LS130 would be too big for what I'm thinking.

An interesting tool would be implementing Festool's rail systems with drywall. Slide it along a T-square.

Something that could also be used to cut the substrate. With lath and plaster the smallest hole can create a bunch of dust, especially if its over your head.  

 
I have the Fein DC attachment for the multimaster. Piece of afterthought crap that Fein added to say the tool has DC. As you can tell, I don't think much of it. Doesn't work any better or possibly even as good as holding the vac end close to the tool.
Festool does have a nice small DC type saw or grinder, can't remember specifically. It was on one of those videos someone posted last year from a European trade show. It would be the perfect tool.
Bosch has a very nice grinder available here in the US with a DC hood. I checked it out at the store, seems to work pretty nice. Runs about $400+ as I remember for the better version. They also have a hood assembly available that works with some of the other Bosch grinders. Don't remember the details since I looked into it last year.
 
I tried the Festool jigsaw recently. I was astonished, as a Bosch jigsaw user, at the lack of blade deflection and the plumb cut and the extraction.

This thread just made a decision for me for wall and ceiling repair cutting.
 
how about an arbotech blade and blade shroud. not sure if theres dc or not but you could drill it and put a port in it
 
I've been out of the trade (mason contractor) for nearly 30 years; so i do not have the answers you are looking for.  i do have another of my true stories to bore ya all with.  When I was learning the trade, I worked with just about every material available from putty to rock.  When i started my own biz, I still worked with whatever was called for.  About two weeks into my own contracting, I was asked by a neighbor to make a patch in their kitchen ceiling.  The material in question was old plaster, including spider cracks all over the entire ceiling. I looked into the attic and discovered the lathe was all wood of various widths, so i knew it had been there for many a moon.  I worked out an estimate suggesting, instead of using plaster, they should think about the newest material on the market at the time, sheetrock.

Why not just make a patch?

That whole ceiling is ready to collapse and you don't want to be around when it does.

Oh come on.  Can't you just use a little spackle or something.

Nope.  You can get somebody else to do that and then you can sue them for your broken heads anytime there after.

After considerable discussion, I agreed to attempt to make a patch using a dovetailed piece of Rock Lathe and key it in.  Yeah, I would try that, but before I touch any part of the ceiling, I had to seal the hotair registers as well as seal up the doors into the other rooms adjacent to the kitchen.  "Now, is that really necessary?"

"Yup. if you expect me to do anything to your ceiling"  All indications were that I was really being way too careful, especially when I covered the sink, stove, fridge and moved all of the movable fixtures out of the room.  I had previously explained that the lathe was unpredictable as far as holding power, the plaster was probably reinforced with horsehair (Today, concrete and plaster are reinforced with fiberglass "hairs") to hold it all together. I could come down with a very big bang.  What had started to disintegrate, and that I was to repair, was an oemebic shaped circle about 18" diameter where the old white coat had fallen away from the browncoat base.  the browncoat was very crumbly and I knew that even a very slight disturbance might bring the entire ceiling crashing down.  In those days, it was not a law to wear hard hats, but it was a very sensible piece of equipment to have on hand.  Once i had every immovable object covered with dropclothes and cushioned with old mattresses and pillows, I donned my trusty hard hat. The helmets in those days looked like those tin hats the Brits wore during WWII, and even tho plastic, were heavy and nobody liked wearing them.  With the wide brims, I was glad they were constructed so.  I still have a couple of those old monsters in my cellar.  Even tho heavy and somewhat ugly, there are times when they make a lot more sense than those narrow brimmed H-hats they wear today.  

As i started to climb my little 4ft step ladder with a stiff wire brush in my hand to try to sluff off some of the crumbly surface plaster, somebody tried opening one of the taped doors into the room.  I yelled for them to stay out, but whoever wanted in was quite determined.  I got down from the ladder and headed out the front door with tool bag and ladder in hand yelling for them to find somebody else to do the job.  After a spell of laying down the law (MY LAW) I finally went back inside while the owners watched thru an outside window.  I scratched away at the lose plaster for a few minutes and then, very carefully, tapped at a corner of the base with a very sharp chisel to loosen some more of the debris that seemed not to be too interested in being removed with the brush.  I had intended to just sort of scratch with the corner of the chisel to determine if it would be possible to cut a key thru the plaster; when all of a sudden, the entire kitchen was a mass of plaster dust, a direct result of total ceiling removal.  I had a big blue nose from where that wide brimmed hard hat had collided with that appendage and the top of my nose was cut from where the bridge of my glasses had dug in.

The owners were so happy that I was the one wearing that ceiling instead of one of them, I got the job of tearing off the plastered walls and redoing the entire room.  They wanted me to do the entire house when i finished, but i assured them I knew a contractor with larger crew who would be very happy to help them with that project.  I told them one blue nose was quite enough for me. [scratch chin]
Tinker

 
Brice Burrell said:
I'd love for Festool to come out with a grinder with decent dust collection.

I'd buy it in a heartbeat, just to use it on my own home.  (I'm not in the trades.)  If they can do it with the TS55, then why not with a grinder?

OTOH, if I could find a blade like Milwaukee's "The Ax" but circular, and sized to fit in my Lamello biscuit joiner, I'd buy a whole case of them.

Regards,

John
 
In my experience with old plaster that's on top of wooden lath, Sawzall type blades just cause more damage, yanking at the materials instead of cutting.  A Rotozip type tool with a bit or diamond blade attachment, Fein Multimaster type tool or a circular saw of varying size need to be in your tool arsenal.

I've never found a "perfect" tool for doing this type of work, which is why I try the different ones to see what works best for the job.

Most of the old horse hair plaster is so dry and improperly mixed to begin with, that it's difficult to get good results no matter how hard you try.

I have found it tricky doing old plaster with metal wire mesh and wooden lath as the three materials respond differently to the different cutting methods.

Anytime I come across this unknown, I make the customer aware of all the possible issues and price the job accordingly.  There's no reason you can't say to the customer that the job went better than expected and you won't need to charge as much as originally thought.  Think about the referrals you'll get from that!
 
Tinker said:
I've been out of the trade (mason contractor) for nearly 30 years; so i do not have the answers you are looking for.  i do have another of my true stories to bore ya all with.  When I was learning the trade, I worked with just about every material available from putty to rock.  When i started my own biz, I still worked with whatever was called for.  About two weeks into my own contracting, I was asked by a neighbor to make a patch in their kitchen ceiling.  The material in question was old plaster, including spider cracks all over the entire ceiling. I looked into the attic and discovered the lathe was all wood of various widths, so i knew it had been there for many a moon.  I worked out an estimate suggesting, instead of using plaster, they should think about the newest material on the market at the time, sheetrock.

Why not just make a patch?

That whole ceiling is ready to collapse and you don't want to be around when it does.

Oh come on.  Can't you just use a little spackle or something.

Nope.  You can get somebody else to do that and then you can sue them for your broken heads anytime there after.

After considerable discussion, I agreed to attempt to make a patch using a dovetailed piece of Rock Lathe and key it in.  Yeah, I would try that, but before I touch any part of the ceiling, I had to seal the hotair registers as well as seal up the doors into the other rooms adjacent to the kitchen.  "Now, is that really necessary?"

"Yup. if you expect me to do anything to your ceiling"  All indications were that I was really being way too careful, especially when I covered the sink, stove, fridge and moved all of the movable fixtures out of the room.  I had previously explained that the lathe was unpredictable as far as holding power, the plaster was probably reinforced with horsehair (Today, concrete and plaster are reinforced with fiberglass "hairs") to hold it all together. I could come down with a very big bang.  What had started to disintegrate, and that I was to repair, was an oemebic shaped circle about 18" diameter where the old white coat had fallen away from the browncoat base.  the browncoat was very crumbly and I knew that even a very slight disturbance might bring the entire ceiling crashing down.  In those days, it was not a law to wear hard hats, but it was a very sensible piece of equipment to have on hand.  Once i had every immovable object covered with dropclothes and cushioned with old mattresses and pillows, I donned my trusty hard hat. The helmets in those days looked like those tin hats the Brits wore during WWII, and even tho plastic, were heavy and nobody liked wearing them.  With the wide brims, I was glad they were constructed so.  I still have a couple of those old monsters in my cellar.  Even tho heavy and somewhat ugly, there are times when they make a lot more sense than those narrow brimmed H-hats they wear today.  

As i started to climb my little 4ft step ladder with a stiff wire brush in my hand to try to sluff off some of the crumbly surface plaster, somebody tried opening one of the taped doors into the room.  I yelled for them to stay out, but whoever wanted in was quite determined.  I got down from the ladder and headed out the front door with tool bag and ladder in hand yelling for them to find somebody else to do the job.  After a spell of laying down the law (MY LAW) I finally went back inside while the owners watched thru an outside window.  I scratched away at the lose plaster for a few minutes and then, very carefully, tapped at a corner of the base with a very sharp chisel to loosen some more of the debris that seemed not to be too interested in being removed with the brush.  I had intended to just sort of scratch with the corner of the chisel to determine if it would be possible to cut a key thru the plaster; when all of a sudden, the entire kitchen was a mass of plaster dust, a direct result of total ceiling removal.  I had a big blue nose from where that wide brimmed hard hat had collided with that appendage and the top of my nose was cut from where the bridge of my glasses had dug in.

The owners were so happy that I was the one wearing that ceiling instead of one of them, I got the job of tearing off the plastered walls and redoing the entire room.  They wanted me to do the entire house when i finished, but i assured them I knew a contractor with larger crew who would be very happy to help them with that project.  I told them one blue nose was quite enough for me. [scratch chin]
Tinker

Wow Tinker, I has no idea that lath and plaster is so brittle. Thank you for posting this because I'm going to be doing some more work on a house that was built in the 50's and a lot of it is lath and plaster. Do you know if they used asbestos in the product in those days as well?
 
Sean.M said:
Have you thought about the PS300?

Scott B. said:
I tried the Festool jigsaw recently. I was astonished, as a Bosch jigsaw user, at the lack of blade deflection and the plumb cut and the extraction.

This thread just made a decision for me for wall and ceiling repair cutting.

It needs to be a plunge type tool to get into corners or near trim and not go deeper than the wall itself. Ever nicked a wire or copper pipe?  [scared] If you know the cavity behind the wall is empty than a jigsaw could work....on drywall.

I use a cordless Makita for taking out big areas if I don't care about saving anything. Using a jigsaw or sawsall on lath and plaster will shake and crack the plaster. Before you know it, you are chasing a loose crack across a room.

Holzhacker said:
I have the Fein DC attachment for the multimaster. Piece of afterthought crap that Fein added to say the tool has DC. As you can tell, I don't think much of it. Doesn't work any better or possibly even as good as holding the vac end close to the tool.
Festool does have a nice small DC type saw or grinder, can't remember specifically. It was on one of those videos someone posted last year from a European trade show. It would be the perfect tool.
Bosch has a very nice grinder available here in the US with a DC hood. I checked it out at the store, seems to work pretty nice. Runs about $400+ as I remember for the better version. They also have a hood assembly available that works with some of the other Bosch grinders. Don't remember the details since I looked into it last year.

That was my thought exactly about the Fein 'add on' attachment. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look for the Bosch you mention. I would be very interested in the Festool you are thinking about.

John Stevens said:
Brice Burrell said:
I'd love for Festool to come out with a grinder with decent dust collection.

Yes, There are tools for fixing the hole, but making makes more dust.
 
Ken Nagrod said:
In my experience with old plaster that's on top of wooden lathe, Sawzall type blades just cause more damage, yanking at the materials instead of cutting.  A Rotozip type tool with a bit or diamond blade attachment, Fein Multimaster type tool or a circular saw of varying size need to be in your tool arsenal.  I've never found a "perfect" tool for doing this type of work, which is why I try the different ones to see what works best for the job.  Most of the old horse hair plaster is so dry and improperly mixed to begin with, that it's difficult to get good results no matter how hard you try.  I have found it tricky doing old plaster with metal wire mesh and wooden lathe as the three materials respond differently to the different cutting methods.  Anytime I come across this unknown, I make the customer aware of all the possible issues and price the job accordingly.  There's no reason you can't say to the customer that the job went better than expected and you won't need to charge as much as originally thought.  Think about the referrals you'll get from that!

Ken, you nailed the issues.....thanks.

 
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