The Best Tips On How To Cut Glass Tile With A Wet Saw?(The Ultimate Guide)

Glass tiles give a gorgeous reflective look to your kitchen and bathroom as they work as a mirror when light fall on them. The glossy surface of the tile gives and stylish look and it is also easier to clean. You can cut the glass tile by your won according to the size of your kitchen backsplash, shower walls or bathroom accents. But the glass tile can easily be damaged while cutting and installation and lose the attractive look! Don’t worry, we will help you by describing how to cut glass tile in the proper way without breaking or damaging this beautiful material.

You can cut the glass tile using the best wet tile saw, a bar cutter, a manual scoring wheel or wheeled mosaic nippers. Here we describe the most useful and easy way -how to cut glass tile with a wet saw.

What Is A Wet Tile Saw?

The best tool to cut the glass tile is wet tile saw. A wet tile saw is used to cut glass or ceramic tiles resulting in a clean- smooth edge. It’s a portable tool with the combination of a mounted table, a circular blade, a water pump and a hose that steadily drenches the cutting area with the flow of water. The water prevents overheating of the blade and the tiles. The wet saw is specially made to create this wet environment and cut the glass or ceramic tiles with no damage. An ordinary saw that is made for wood or metal can’t reach this goal. The wet saw uses a special diamond blade that is specially introduced for the purpose of glass and ceramic cutting.

Choose Your Tile

First, you have to buy choose a tile with a beautiful color that matches your kitchen backsplash or the place where you are going to install it. You will get tiles of different colors and sizes in any tile supply store. Even if you don’t get your desired one, you can give a customized order.

Choose High-Quality Wet Saw and Blade

You can buy a wet saw of the inexpensive model by spending only $100 and if you want to get some high-quality saw for long-term use, it may cost up to $1000. If you need to use the saw only once or twice, then you don’t even need to buy it. You can rent it from a construction tool rental store or any local big-box home center. You can rent a good-quality saw of $500 with around $50 for a day.

Now choose a high-quality glass blade which is manufactured with the fine and uniform diamond grain so that it cuts the glass tiles smoothly.

Clean The Surface of The Saw

The surface of the electric wet saw, on which you will place the glass tile, should be cleaned properly. You should be careful about cleaning it as a small piece of glass or a grain of sand on the blade can cause much difficulty in smooth cutting and the edges of the painted tiles can be damaged. If you use the wet saw with the stable disk, then cleaning the blade and the support surface becomes more important as you have to slide the tiles through this support surface. So, clean the support surface with plain water before you start cutting the tiles.

Sharpening The Blade

The edges of most of the diamond blades of the saw are not ready-to-use unless it’s brand new. In such a case, you have to clear and sharpen the diamond cutting edges to increase the cutting capacity. You can use special white fine-grained abrasive stone for this purpose. We advise you not to use any ordinary stone or concrete blocks to sharpen your blade as they can cause serious damage to the blade and make it unusable for cutting glass tiles. Proper sharpening of the blade will speed up the cutting and there will be less vibration while operation.

Mark The Cutting Lines

Take the measure of the tile that you need to cut and mark the cutting lines on the surface of the tile with a washable marker so that you can easily remove the mark by washing it after you finish cutting.

Use Plenty Of Water

Adjust the valve of the saw with the maximum flow of water.The wet saw will regulate the flow of the water that goes onto the surface of the disc for the cutting purpose. Use plenty of water in order to cool down your glass tile as well as the glass blade. If the glass is overheated while cutting, then it may crack down very easily.

How To Cut The Glass Tiles?

Turn on the saw after pulling on rubber gloves in hand. Wait for around 15 seconds to let the water flow over the blade freely. Now align the tiles with wet saw following the guidelines and cut very carefully along the lines you have drawn.  You have to feed the tile into the saw with slow speed but steady pressure. When you are finished with your cutting, power off the saw and clean the remaining marks on the tiles with a wet cloth or something like that.

Speed Up The Cutting Process

You can cut the tiles very quickly by using a new wet saw of high quality and in this case, the cutting vibration and even the risk of cracking will also reduce. But in case of using medium or low-quality glass blade, we can only advice you to use more and more water for better performance but still, it not gives the best result.

The cutting of your glass tile is done! But don’t forget that you are dealing with fragile glass tiles and handle them with much care while installing them. The corner and edges of the tiles are sharp, so pay attention so that you don’t have any injury with them.

Conclusion

A wet saw is a helpful and cost-effective tool to cut the tiles especially when you need many straight cuts for large area tiling. The use of wet saw reduces the risk of damage of the glass tiles and gives you clean edges of the tiles in a time–effective way. The release of the steady flow of water by the wet cools down the cut edges, reduces the risk of cracking and gives a smooth edge.

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How To Cut A Hole In A Tile.

The Ultimate Guide On How To Cut Porcelain Tile

Last Updated on September 9, 2020 by Robert Patrick