What have you used for spacers before

[Gazzer]

Cheers from land of blond babes and cheap furniture.

/sWe

Poundland Essex??????

 

[reaper72]

cardboardfrom tile box.if im caught short with spacers i have cut them in half before.

This is a BAD idea as the weight of tiles could crush the cardboard and when u return to grout,you could have a full wall of slipped tiles,you'd never catch me using **** like that:lol:

 

[brian c]

stick to your glue gun m8:whatchutalkingabout

 

[White Room]

I'm new here, and I'm Swedish, so please excuse me if I missinterpret something. I also don't know what's common practice in the UK, but I'll try to not make that much of an arse of myself Here goes...

I tend to work free-hand, but spacers have their uses. Have you tried rope/string? 3mm string for walls, 5mm string for floors, or some such, depending on customer/construction requirements.
Wet the string with a bit of water first, just enough to make it damp. You don't want yer precious, reusable string to get all lumpy with old adhesive, and the damp will prevent that. Do the first row,check the spacing with a piece of string, then "lay" the string "on top" of the first row, and "fasten" it with two or three tiles on the second row. Repeat. Remove the string and rinse it when you run out of string, or when the wall is done, or what ever feels appropriate. This method is tried and true, spaghetti is not

It works well on small surfaces, but is especially handy when working on very large surfaces, such as public baths, where deviation in the straightness of the, um, grouting, or whatever it's called in english, becomes very visible. Using plastic spacers when doing 8m*20m walls with 10cmx10cm tiles is not an attractive option, as you might need to compensate for deviations in the size of the tiles or some such. Using rope/string is also alot faster once you get the hang of it.

Cheers from land of blond babes and cheap furniture.

/sWe

Have heard of this before from a tiler who's father has somethink like 50+ years experiance tiling. Would use some kind of string on the long runs of tile's, Mind you only heard about once and never seen anyone use this method.

 

[knightonthetile]

spaggetti is actually quite good as emergency spacers. when your done tiling you can eat it , saving another £5.00 on a big mac

 

[GazTech]

Have heard of this before from a tiler who's father has somethink like 50+ years experiance tiling. Would use some kind of string on the long runs of tile's, Mind you only heard about once and never seen anyone use this method.

He will have been the son of a bricklayer :lol:

 

[sWe]

Have heard of this before from a tiler who's father has somethink like 50+ years experiance tiling. Would use some kind of string on the long runs of tile's, Mind you only heard about once and never seen anyone use this method.

Using string is real old. I'm not familiar with the english terminology for this, but in the old days, when tilers used damp concrete and cement (of a creamish consistency) to install tiles, using string as spacing guides was quite common. Or so I've been told atleast. Under certain circumstances, using the concrete-cement method is still used in many countries (don't know about britain), mostly for out doors tiling, and REAL large floors in industrial buildings etc, because it's so damn strong. It's messy, heavy, and takes alot more time than modern methods, but if it's done properly, and without rushing, you certainly can't argue with the result. Personally, I avoid it, to much effort involved, and the results are comparable to standard methods.

 

[Rosco0110]

Can you tight fisted buggers just buy a few bags o spacers to keep in the van.
This is hilarious, string,, cardboard, spaghetti!!!! Youll be trimmin your toe nails with a stanley and using that next.:joker:

 

[wivers]

I was gonna use my winky as a spacer once but it was a 5 mm joint and mines only 2 mm

 

[Raja]

I was gonna use my winky as a spacer once but it was a 5 mm joint and mines only 2 mm

getting worse than me :lol: