Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Good value, precise and easy to use |
| Disadvantages: |
Only cuts straight lines |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
On deciding to give our bathroom a revamp, we bought some lovely new ceramic wall tiles and stone borders, then contacted a local builder (who is also a friend) to give us a price for fixing them.
We were thinking of a price of around £150 as it isn't a very big area. To our shock, he quoted us a price of £300 excluding adhesive, grout, edgings, spacers etc.
Thinking that this was a bit ridiculous, we decided we would do it ourselves.
We went to our local Focus DIY store to get all the tools we needed, most importantly, a tile cutter.
Having never used one before, we decided to make our choice by choosing somewhere in the middle of cheap and expensive.
There was a choice of cutters ranging from £12 up to £40.
The Plasplugs Contractor Tile Cutter retailed at £19.99 and caught our eye because it actually looked more expensive compared to others. Also, the Plasplug brand is a very reputable brand and is the largest manufacturer of tile cutters and other tiling tools in the world.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT IT:
It is packaged in an oblong box approx 24" x 6", quite bright with a large picture of the cutter on the front and a picture of Tommy Walsh (of Ground Force fame and also the writer of many DIY books). He actually endorses this product and quotes "Faster tiling, single action cutter".
The cutter can be used for floor and wall tiles in ceramic,Quarry, Terracota and vitrified. It cuts tiles up to 12mm thick and up to 330mm square.
It works on a 'score and snap' mechanism, which means that you lay the tile onto the surface of the cutter, lining up the required cut line over the steel bar. This can be held in place by the fixed set square, for precision.
Then by pushing the lever away from you, across the tile, the tile is scored by a 13mm diameter ground tungsten carbide scoring wheel.
When you finish scoring, you gently press the lever ( there is no need to use any force), which quickly and precisely snaps the tile.
We were very impressed with the simplicity and precision of this great tool.
Bearing in mind that the last time we did any tiling was when we were first married, some 20 years ago, when we scored the tiles with a stanley knife and then snapped them over a match!
Needless to say we ended up with more broken, misshaped tiles than whole ones.
So this new tiling experience was quite gob-smacking and even after successfully cutting about 20 tiles, we would still look at each other with amazement every time the tiles snapped so accurately!
I must point out though that this particular cutter only cuts parrallel cuts, but for small, squared cutouts, we still used the cutter to score the shape and then used a pair of nibblers to nibble the shape out.
TO SUM UP:
This tile cutter is very good value for money. It is quality construction, compact and extremely easy to use and well as giving very accurate and clean cuts.
Best of all, it enabled us to do a very satisfactory job of tiling our bathroom and saved us £300 which we can now use to buy some nice new taps and a posh heated towel radiator!
