Hot take: those cheap $40 tile cutters are a total scam

I bought a basic $40 tile cutter from the hardware store last month to do my backsplash. It chipped every single tile I tried to cut, totally unusable after 10 cuts. Ended up renting a wet saw from Home Depot for $65 a day and finished the whole job in 3 hours. Anyone else waste money on those handheld cutters?

2 comments

2 Comments

sanchez.sean22d ago

Hold up, I gotta push back on this one HARD. Those cheap $40 cutters are actually PERFECT for certain jobs, you just gotta know what you're doing. I've used the same basic Ryobi one for like 5 years and it's cut hundreds of ceramic tiles clean as can be, no chips no nothing. The whole trick is scoring the line ONCE with firm even pressure and then snapping it right away, not going back and forth like a saw. You probably got a bad batch or you're trying to cut porcelain or something that's way too hard for a manual cutter. And let's be real, renting a wet saw for $65 a day adds up quick if you have to do more than one day, plus you gotta haul that thing and clean the sludge out of the tray. Don't blame the tool if you didn't read the instructions or bought the wrong type for your tile material.

sean11922d ago

My buddy Dave bought one of those cheap cutters from Harbor Freight and swore it was junk until he figured out he was pressing too hard on the score line and snapping it wrong. He switched to a lighter touch like @sanchez.sean described and now he uses that same cutter for all his bathroom remodels without any issues. It is definitely about knowing your tool and the tile you are working with, not just the price tag.