VIDEO: Man cuts tile perfectly

giphy

4 Likes

There’s definitely more art involved in some of the trades, especially the ones producing final finish. I can do electrical and plumbing all day long. My conduit bending is pretty good for someone who only does it occasionally. Framing isn’t a big deal either. I hire out drywall/taping/masonry/paint though. I can do all those but the speed and polish that the guys doing it 40h+ a week have is impressive. I once watched tapers do a flat ceiling in one pass with almost no touch-up sanding afterwards. It was awesome to behold.

4 Likes

That’s where the danger slips in. Overconfidence in this sort of thing is a maimer.

The people I’ve heard of who have sliced off bits of fingers while cutting vegetables were usually very experienced vegetable slicers.

4 Likes

Oh damn that’s cool.

Imagine how much bacon that gang saw could slice… Bet the mob uses that to get rid of bodies quick

I once lately ground into my finger with a right angle grinder. Just missed muscles, didn’t feel a thing, but lots of blood.

I nearly cut my hand in half once, used to run a 13’ long blade solid diamond bandsaw, for cutting up multihundred pound blocks of tungsten carbide.

Because the stuff is so heavy it basically laps the saw table over time to a mirror finish slicker than shit through a goose, so the billets slide very easily. One moved a little too easily- and pinched my hand between the diamond blade and the block- and because it weighed a couple hundred pounds I had to put all my weight into stopping it before it pushed my hand right through the saw at the knuckle.

To this day I have a black scar directly over my middle knuckle on one hand because of the submicron carbide powder from that blade fusing with my flesh. Took 4 stitches to sew shut, but I never even felt it cut.

Abrasives are extremely dangerous especially diamond ones, not just because they cut through anything- but because sometimes you don’t even feel them cutting you.

4 Likes

While in the US there is no formal training for building contractors, inGermany there is a required 3 year training for most crafts, also for tilers.

I don’t think it’s much of a talent, most people can learn this in 3 years.

Watch it again, and you‘ll find what he does is fairly simple and obvious. How else would you do this?

1 Like

From my hobby experience it would have been make-a-template time: Lay down a few pieces of uncut card-stock (~0.007" thickness minimum for stability) to cover the entire untiled area (angling the pieces as necessary to index into the corners… however un-squared off); carefully tape them all together while in place; pencil-in the ‘outer’ overhanging areas (i.e., where the tile will be adjacent to the tiles already laid down and accounting for the desired gap between the tiles), remove the taped together template; scissor-off where you penciled-in, and that’s your template for cutting the tile. Of course that would require card-stock and tape and at least 10X the time ‘super tile guy’ spent on the tile… but I’ll never be a ‘super tile guy’.

2 Likes

I was on a job years ago when a guy who was about 25 said to me “You’re the first guy I ever worked with who always wears goggles and earplugs” to which I replied “That’s because you worked with morons.”
The guy has some skills but a pretty unhealthy disregard for safety. If OSHA showed up there could be a list of violations due to the silica dust, to the lack of safety equipment, and the disabling of safety features on the equipment.
Everyone does ill advised things on a job, but if you make a habit of it, it will come around and bite you on the ass eventually.

4 Likes

From seeing the work of newer and older mechs/techs at my job and their varying quality, I’m thinking the tile guy has an ingrained knack — right out the chute — for this and other related work. (Pride in your work is also very much a component.)

2 Likes

Complacency. I got instant big-time safety education on that my first year at my first employer, often seeing one particular prosthetic-armed fellow in the shop; I’m talking hook-claw hands. Machine-guards (and other safety devices, and procedures) eventually ‘got’ to the company where it’s now safety first… schedule second. At my latest employer, one repeatedly unsafe, overly “casual” bonehead tech was required at a morning meeting to inform our entire group of what he did wrong and why it was unsafe; while saying all that, he continuously smirked and seemed to make light of what he was reporting on. The three safety guys in the room then stopped the show and took him into another room for a more intimate chat.

4 Likes

Measure eleventy hundred times, cut three or four. Usually gets me there in the end! :wink:

If they can avoid accidents, good for them (but it’s pretty dumb).

What always bugs me is seeing them not wearing ear defenders. The noise levels of some of those tools (especially the larger diameter brick.stone cutters) is fearsome and while each cut may be a few seconds, cumulatively … well, you want tinnitus and/or partial deafness in 20 years’ time? This is how you get it.

2 Likes

Yeah. My buddy cut the palm of his hand off on a mandolin cutting potatoes. I asked him why he didn’t use a cut glove and his response was something like “Everyone would make fun of me!”

5 Likes

I installed a machine at a granite table manufacturer ~20 years ago. They routinely had to lift huge blocks of granite, sometimes flipping them over. I don’t know the weight; these things were up to 1m thick, perhaps 2m W x 4m L; many tonnes.

The head safety person was an older gentleman missing his left arm just above the elbow if memory serves. He supervised every lift. Everyone listened to him…

4 Likes

I spent my first year as an apprentice cook cutting a lot of julienne so 30 years later I still have very good knife skills having left the trade some 25 years ago. A kitchen knife is probably one of the most common domestic tools but few non-professionals know how to use one.

I was challenged when trying to cut soba noodles recently where as a friend who didn’t have the skills was much better.

Love so much to watch any skilled trades person and think any craft skills should be championed.

4 Likes

Yep. Complacency kills, along with being in a hurry.

I was putting in flooring in a spare room last week, and the last row of planks needed to be rip-cut on a table saw. The nature of the cut was that I could not use the blade guards, but I still took my time and was running the plank through with the push stick. And when I tried to catch the plank on the out-feed side of the saw, the plank slipped out, and the push stick got caught by the saw blade and thrown ~20-30 feet into the wall on the far side of the patio where I had set up the saw. no injuries, but the push stick has some interesting scars now. At least it was not my fingers.

Respect power tools, for they will never respect you and will try to kill | maim | injure you every chance they get.

4 Likes

Needs:

Eye protection
Ear/hearing protection
and
Lung/breathing/airway protection

signed,
someone involved in a large tile job in ATX
(today is “grout day” and my lunchbreak is over now, so TTFN)

5 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.