six-point socket II
Member
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2016
- Messages
- 2,219
The reasons for wanting to re-use/save/rescue tiles vary. Blades to cut grout and grind/sand tile cement have been around for a long time - but how well do current carbide oscillating multitool blades work & hold up?
My reason in this instance was isolated water damage to a single wall. The water destroyed the plaster so there was no bonding between tile cement and plaster anymore. However tile cement and grout still had perfect adhesion to the tiles.
The spares I put aside wouldn't have been enough to re-do the whole length of the wall, buying another pack of the tiles and cutting them would have been an option in theory, but: the tiles are porcelain stoneware, incredible hard to cut manually and exceed the capacity of my manual tile cutter by +- 1mm in thickness.
With softer tiles, that wouldn't be a real issue. With these, it results in an above-average amount of waste/ broken tiles. Been there, done that.
So instead of buying a higher capacity tile cutter or even circular tile cutter and tiles, I opted to re-use the existing ones.
Two carbide oscillating multitool blades are needed, a tongue shaped cutting blade equaling grit 40 and a triangular-shaped grinding/sanding plate equaling grit 20. The sanding plate is designed to work with dust extraction. The cutting blade can be used tongue in or out, on the bottom side the carbide stripe is about 1 cm wide, so it can be used for light grinding/sanding if its the only blade you have/ only a small repair.
[attachimg=1]
Knowing that on these tongue type blades the tongue is always suffering the most and having no idea what to expect from these blade, speaking of durability/lifetime, wear and tear I decided to start by using it tongue in.
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
I quickly realized that while cutting vertical grouting, the collateral damage to surrounding grouting by using the blade tongue in is quite substantial, so tongue out it was from there on.
[attachimg=4]
Once I had removed all the tiles, I had to think about if I really wanted to remove the thick chunks of tile cement by sanding only. I opted against that and "build" myself a jig from a few scraps that would hold the tiles for tile cement removal with a small but sharp chisel, in Germany referred to as "Electrician's chisel". That worked like a charm - and plenty of tile cement was removed fast and easily. But obviously still enough left for the sanding plate.
[attachimg=5]
Since the sanding plate allowed for dust extraction to be used I installed the dust extraction adapter on the Fein and connected it to my Festool Midi I. That got rid of all the dust that would otherwise be airborne but still quite a bit of dust fell to the floor.
[attachimg=6]
I'm very happy with the durability of both blades, they have a lot of life left in them and especially the results of sanding the tile cement off the back of the tiles are incredible, you get right down to the tile's back, it's almost like it has not been set/installed before, so you really don't have to worry about any residue and complications from it while re-setting the tiles.
40 grit is good for cutting, but already too fine for quickly and thoroughly sanding down tile cement, the 20 grit makes quick work of tile cement and is highly recommended for that.
I've said it before, durability/life time seems to be great on both blades, they did not lose any bite/ carbide particles - which I had wondered about before using them. And you know these tiles are hard when the sanding plate gets the tile cement off but is not able to actually leave significant marks on the back of the tiles.
Kind regards,
Oliver
My reason in this instance was isolated water damage to a single wall. The water destroyed the plaster so there was no bonding between tile cement and plaster anymore. However tile cement and grout still had perfect adhesion to the tiles.
The spares I put aside wouldn't have been enough to re-do the whole length of the wall, buying another pack of the tiles and cutting them would have been an option in theory, but: the tiles are porcelain stoneware, incredible hard to cut manually and exceed the capacity of my manual tile cutter by +- 1mm in thickness.
With softer tiles, that wouldn't be a real issue. With these, it results in an above-average amount of waste/ broken tiles. Been there, done that.
So instead of buying a higher capacity tile cutter or even circular tile cutter and tiles, I opted to re-use the existing ones.
Two carbide oscillating multitool blades are needed, a tongue shaped cutting blade equaling grit 40 and a triangular-shaped grinding/sanding plate equaling grit 20. The sanding plate is designed to work with dust extraction. The cutting blade can be used tongue in or out, on the bottom side the carbide stripe is about 1 cm wide, so it can be used for light grinding/sanding if its the only blade you have/ only a small repair.
[attachimg=1]
Knowing that on these tongue type blades the tongue is always suffering the most and having no idea what to expect from these blade, speaking of durability/lifetime, wear and tear I decided to start by using it tongue in.
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
I quickly realized that while cutting vertical grouting, the collateral damage to surrounding grouting by using the blade tongue in is quite substantial, so tongue out it was from there on.
[attachimg=4]
Once I had removed all the tiles, I had to think about if I really wanted to remove the thick chunks of tile cement by sanding only. I opted against that and "build" myself a jig from a few scraps that would hold the tiles for tile cement removal with a small but sharp chisel, in Germany referred to as "Electrician's chisel". That worked like a charm - and plenty of tile cement was removed fast and easily. But obviously still enough left for the sanding plate.
[attachimg=5]
Since the sanding plate allowed for dust extraction to be used I installed the dust extraction adapter on the Fein and connected it to my Festool Midi I. That got rid of all the dust that would otherwise be airborne but still quite a bit of dust fell to the floor.
[attachimg=6]
I'm very happy with the durability of both blades, they have a lot of life left in them and especially the results of sanding the tile cement off the back of the tiles are incredible, you get right down to the tile's back, it's almost like it has not been set/installed before, so you really don't have to worry about any residue and complications from it while re-setting the tiles.
40 grit is good for cutting, but already too fine for quickly and thoroughly sanding down tile cement, the 20 grit makes quick work of tile cement and is highly recommended for that.
I've said it before, durability/life time seems to be great on both blades, they did not lose any bite/ carbide particles - which I had wondered about before using them. And you know these tiles are hard when the sanding plate gets the tile cement off but is not able to actually leave significant marks on the back of the tiles.
Kind regards,
Oliver
