How to trim very narrow strips of tile on a wet saw
Cutting any type of tile (natural stone or man made) on a wet saw is nothing new these days. Mark your cut line, place tile on a wet say, and cut. However, some times you need to trim off just a 1/16 of an inch of a tile. If you have ever tried to cut off a hair line of a tile piece, and make the cut arrow straight you know that it’s a very complicated thing to do.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a top bathroom remodel specialist, or a do it yourselfer – small tweaks to an already cut piece of tile are inevitable. When the width of the cut you are trying to perform is narrower then the width of your cutting blade two things usually happen:
1. Either your cutting blade gets deflected to the side
2. Or your piece of tile gets deflected to the other side of the cut
We do a lot of bathroom remodels in Seattle area, and lately a lot of our clients have been choosing porcelain tile for their project. Porcelain, being one of the densest tiles on the market intensifies this effect dramatically.
I have seen many pros solve this problem by putting their fingers on the other side of the blade while they cut, and keep pressure on a spinning blade – affectively keeping the blade from deflecting. The problem with this method (outside of it being “unsafe”) is that your cut is vary rarely straight after this technique.
The trick I’m showing above is both safe, and very affective. You will get a perfectly straight rips of tile no matter how little you are trying to trim off.