Still confused about dry cutters

[Alberta Stone]

Not really, I just like to work with stone more than ceramics, and it pays a bit better as well, so I work with it more.
There is lots of ceramics of all kinds here.

 

[Grace'sDad]

What do you mean, specifically?

Just the more I learn and see the quality of work in other countries, the more I see how "backward" we still are in the UK.

So often I have customers wanting an MTV-Cribs-looking perfect marble floor using £4 per tile polished turkish marble, fixed to the knackered timber floor of a 1930s semi detached house. Or a monolithic black gloss floor using B&Q polished "black" porcelain.

I'm not saying that we don't have good tilers and stone fixers here.
We just don't have many. (and we have too many who pretend that they can....)

 

[Daz]

If you like to see the scoreline and want light'ish I would look at the Rubi TR-400 or TR-400-S. Not too heavy and will meet your needs.
Not sure on pricing tho'

I have a TR-600-S and it certainly ticks my boxes :santa_cheesy:

 

[sWe]

Just the more I learn and see the quality of work in other countries, the more I see how "backward" we still are in the UK.

So often I have customers wanting an MTV-Cribs-looking perfect marble floor using £4 per tile polished turkish marble, fixed to the knackered timber floor of a 1930s semi detached house. Or a monolithic black gloss floor using B&Q polished "black" porcelain.

I'm not saying that we don't have good tilers and stone fixers here.
We just don't have many. (and we have too many who pretend that they can....)

I've never understood the fascination with PVA many brits seem to have :rofl:

On a more serious note; It seems to me that the UK needs a strong standards body which can enforce sound standards in the construction industry (and in related industries) and streamline and uniformize the training and education of tradesmen.

On some customers being daft; nothing new there.On tradesmen cutting corners, being incompetent, etc... Ask the Romans. They probably had alot to say about that plasterer/joiner/tiler/whatever Quintus who botched this or that...

Not really, I just like to work with stone more than ceramics, and it pays a bit better as well, so I work with it more.
There is lots of ceramics of all kinds here.

Right-oh. It's just that, most of the time when I look at north american threads on tiling, it's about natural stone

 

[user123]

The Masterpiuma weighs in at 8.3 kilos, and handles pretty much everything I throw at it with ease. It handles 62cm straight cuts and 44x44cm tiles on the diagonal.

If you want to do some really artistic stuff, you should probably get a Montolit Combi Slalom. You can do curved cuts with it; watch the video whydontcha. EDIT: Ooops, wrong vid link. Updated.

Thanks heaps sWe, think I've fallen in love - with the combi slalom...hmm - hmmm! Can do curved cuts but doubt my ability to repeat them exactly over lots of tiles....Will have to be a really really good girl really quickly for a late delivery from Father Christmas... if not it's probably worth waiting for and getting one of the rubi ones as well, first or whatever...!!! Oh my god, I'm feeling faint....:santa_cheesy:

And just bumped into one of the local decorators yesterday who is well liked and known for his quality work (not tiling) and knows me from way back when he watched me do up my flat - and he was chuffed to take my cards for the odd little tiling job to start me off with and was REALLY interested in my mosaics and being able to do unusual stuff... even hubby (forever watchful) said that he showed genuine interest YO!

Now THAT's Christmas :hurray:

 

[sWe]

Thanks heaps sWe, think I've fallen in love - with the combi slalom...hmm - hmmm! Can do curved cuts but doubt my ability to repeat them exactly over lots of tiles....Will have to be a really really good girl really quickly for a late delivery from Father Christmas... if not it's probably worth waiting for and getting one of the rubi ones as well, first or whatever...!!! Oh my god, I'm feeling faint....:santa_cheesy:

Lol, I had a feeling you'd like that little number

On repeating cuts... Make templates... If you just need to do a couple of repetitions, make a template from a piece of plasterboard. If you need to do loads of repetitions, make them out of MDF. Using MDF, you can build a "library of cuts"/"cuts portfolio" of sorts, which kind of makes it easier if a future customer really likes something you've done previously.

 

[DHTiling]

Just the more I learn and see the quality of work in other countries, the more I see how "backward" we still are in the UK.

So often I have customers wanting an MTV-Cribs-looking perfect marble floor using £4 per tile polished turkish marble, fixed to the knackered timber floor of a 1930s semi detached house. Or a monolithic black gloss floor using B&Q polished "black" porcelain.

I'm not saying that we don't have good tilers and stone fixers here.
We just don't have many. (and we have too many who pretend that they can....)

Not very often i am out spoken on here.......but what a load of tosh that comment is....


A perfect marble flat lipless floor can be achieved in any country, they are laid and ground flat to achieve that flat jointless look, the problem is our customers won't pay for that look, MTV crib look....lol lol...thats coz they have the money to pay for it.

It's the customers that get took in by these looks and not that tilers in the uk can't do it.....

As for quality of tiling in other countries, i have seen an awful lot of bad tiling in other countries as well.

Very high standards of tiling can be seen in any country and to say that tilers in this country are not capable of it is ridiculous to say the least...

I don't intend to ruffle any ones feathers here, but comments like that are disrespectful to the uk tiling industry.

 

[user123]

Not very often i am out spoken on here.......but what a load of tosh that comment is....


A perfect marble flat lipless floor can be achieved in any country, they are laid and ground flat to achieve that flat jointless look, the problem is our customers won't pay for that look, MTV crib look....lol lol...thats coz they have the money to pay for it.

It's the customers that get took in by these looks and not that tilers in the uk can't do it.....

As for quality of tiling in other countries, i have seen an awful lot of bad tiling in other countries as well.

Very high standards of tiling can be seen in any country and to say that tilers in this country are not capable of it is ridiculous to say the least...

I don't intend to ruffle any ones feathers here, but comments like that are disrespectful to the uk tiling industry.

Well I second that Dave, I was quite shocked as well, you must have had a bad day, Grace's Dad.

If anything bad tiling is done internationally by anyone with a 'that'll do' attitude or by people who just don't know how to do it better, we have them in Germany, have seen crummy tiling in almost all European countries (especially the ladies loos!) and in parts of the US, too - you get amazingly perfect results as well as horror stories anywhere.

My Dad did all the tiling in our house, he was a Mercedes draftsman engineer, with absolute perfection, but when he fell ill we got a tradesman in for something who charged a fortune. left a mess, and was nowhere near as good, bad luck, we could have been luckier.

Negativity towards your own country if anything is, however, an English trait and such a shame. It's a beautiful country here, my home of choice, with fantastic people who are forward looking, inspired and inspiring, for all to see who are prepared to look clearly and who don't get sidetracked by the ridiculous negative and unhelpful media here.

Be proud of the craftsmanship that has been achieved here, and just add to it....you can only see your shadow if you turn away from the sun...

 

[sWe]

Negativity towards your own country if anything is, however, an English trait and such a shame.

Trust me on this: Cultural cringe is not a strickly English trait.
It's quite common in many countries. Something funny I've observed, is that the "more politically correct" someone strives or attempts to be, the more likely he or she is to have a cultural inferiority complex of some sort. The more extreme cases I've seen, have exhibited fully fledged cultural masochism.

Looking to other cultures and nations for solutions to problems in one's own, can be quite healthy, but the line between "healthy" and "excessive, unhealthy, and downright counter-productive and harmful" is very thin.

 

[tile55]

If weight if the most important factor then you might want to consider the Rubi pocket range

very light and will even cut porcelain tiles, cheap aswell, about £50.:santa_cheesy:

 

[Grace'sDad]

Fair comments from all and I HAD had a bad day as it happens!

My comments on "backwards" uk was aimed at the nation - not at tilers in general. I really meant that we are really years behind in our experience and tastes. As it happens, I've just completed a mirror flat floor in polsihed marble. Hard but satisfying work.

Perhaps "backwards" was a poor word to use. "Behind" would have been more appropriate. Sorry if I made you bristle Dave. (you with your martial arts an' all!)

I am hacked off with customers who expect floors and bathrooms like Tony Hawk's 8 million dollar mansion, using B&Q poop in a 1950's asbestos and artex ridden semi.

Also hacked off with the country in general right now. I love the place but the people "in charge" are slowly but surely killing it. sWe's comments about the UK needing a strong regulatory body - nice idea and I fully agree but it aint gonna happen - not here, not now. We are far too busy launching multi-million pound "investigations" into ridiculous things like why John Sargeant didn't win Strictly Dome Dancing. :rant:

 

[DHTiling]

It wasn't the backwards comment GD.....it was as if you were saying that UK tilers cannot turn out high quality Cribs style tiling......which is not true IMO....and as if tilers in this country are no good at it...


wots with the martial arts comment...??..meaning wot exactly...i was defending the uk tiling community as a whole not some sort of personal attack...

 

[Grace'sDad]

It wasn't the backwards comment GD.....it was as if you were saying that UK tilers cannot turn out high quality Cribs style tiling......which is not true IMO....and as if tilers in this country are no good at it...

It's not what I meant though. I was saying that customer expect it for the same price as a standard floor. I'm losing track of how many times I have to explain to customers that the bling bling monolithic floors they see on Cribs and in Vogue photo shoots are done so very differently to standard tiling (unless of course they are just well tiled). Of course UK tilers can compete with the best, but do we really as a whole have as much experience with quality stone work as our counterparts in the States and Europe?

wots with the martial arts comment...??..meaning wot exactly...i was defending the uk tiling community as a whole not some sort of personal attack...

The martial arts comment was a joke, nothing else. Meaning I am sorry if I bristled you or anyone else with ill-though-out words last night and I wasn't looking to get my butt kicked, either in person or in written form! No offence intended - ever - honest!!! (I know you wasn't attacking me and you were right to defend)

 

[DHTiling]

I think it really depends upon what work you have witnesed... i have seen some work by fixers that would blow your socks off.....trust me......the states guys are not the bees knees of fixers out there....

Also my apologies GD if i came across abrupt. i am very passionate about tiling as a whole in the uk.....We are as good as any country at it......just sometimes we do not get the opportunity to work on high spec stuff......but i know by some of the users albums that we have, there is some very high standard of tilers as members......

 

[doug boardley]

guess one of these is no good then (hee hee you keep leaving door open!):santa_cheesy:
ps I've got a black belt in origami, so unless you want folding in three......