The Value of a Good Tool

I was at Lowe's over the summer looking at tile saws. I have two big tile projects to do in my house - the kitchen and bathroom - and if I add another bathroom later as planned, that will be a third. I wanted to get a tile saw instead of renting one for many reasons, not the least of which is that if I rent one, I will spend as much or more on renting the thing than I would if I just bought a good one.

So, back to my opening sentence. I was at Lowe's over the summer looking at tile saws. They had quite a few models available from the under $100.00 one that may do decent straight cuts if you're lucky, to this really nice bridge saw that looked solid as a rock and appeared to be quite versatile. My dad and I were trying to decide which tool to buy, and we sought advice from the guy in the tile department and a tile installer who was there looking at saws himself.

Now here's the deal. First, my tile design is fairly complex with various shapes and thicknesses of tile - the thicker tiles will need to be mitered as they turn inside and outside corners (chair rail tile, a listel, and a decorative beaded accent.) Second, I will not put up with junky tools. I have found that the better quality tool is just that - better quality - and often radically better in performance and accuracy than its cheaper counterparts. So while it may hurt to spend twice the money on a tool, if it saves me from wasting my time struggling with an inferior tool, I'm more than happy to fork over the dough.

Again, back to the tile department at Lowe's. So we're talking to these two guys - the one working the department, and the tile installer - and I'm asking them questions and I indicate that I'm pretty interested in this bridge saw. Both of them just freak out. Oh, no! That's overkill for what you want. Just get one of these little portable saws and you'll be fine. In other words, they patted me on the head and told me to go off and play with my dolls while the big, manly men did the work.

So I didn't buy anything that day. I wanted to do some research on the saws and decide what I should get. Part of my concern with the other tile saws was that the motor was stationary and the (flimsy) table moved, so you are pushing the workpiece through the blade. The table was grooved for drainage, and it was difficult to slide - herky jerky - and difficult to hold the workpiece AND slide the table. This would cause problems with the precision cuts I will need to make.

The other part of my concern is that I am left-handed, so using any tool with a motor on it can prove awkward because the motor is always mounted on the left side. It's not like a baseball glove or a guitar where you can order the left-handed model. While this reality has forced me to become more ambidextrous, it makes me nervous to feel clumsy around a spinning blade.

I got busy with all the other projects I had to get done over the summer and ended up not doing any homework on the tile saw. Instead, my dad went out and bought one like the one pictured here.

Last weekend, we finally got the bathroom prepped for tile and were going to start cutting and installing the tile on the walls and shower surround. In preparation for this momentous, and highly anticipated event, my dad unboxed the tile saw, assembled it, and did some test cuts.

The straight cuts went well. The diagonal cuts across the tiles went fine. In fact, he and my mom got all the diagonal cuts done for the diamond pattern that goes in the decorative band that surrounds the room. (Once they replaced the stupid pump which spit the bit after one use.)

But.... miter cuts were simply not happening. None of our test cuts were successful, and we tried everything. Part of the problem was that the water wasn't staying on the under side of the blade since the blade was tilted at a 45-degree angle. We tried supplementing with the garden hose to see if that would suffice. It was better, but there was something hinky about the entire thing. Not to mention, I was struggling with holding the tile securely and pushing it through the blade. There just wasn't enough room for my dominant hand to work properly. My dad, who is right-handed, didn't have any better luck. After much swearing and time wasted, we rinsed the entire saw off, piled it and its box in the back of my car and we returned it to Lowe's. To their credit, they didn't make a peep about us returning a used tool, still assembled, out of the box, and without the receipt, I might add. They simply credited my dad's card for the purchase.

We went into the store to look at the tile saws again - I was hell-bent on getting that bridge saw and even had fantasies of what I would cut off of the guys who had talked me out of it several months back - but they no longer carry that brand or that style of saw. #(%*(*$)*($

We went to Home Desperate, to the same end. No bridge saw. Nothing but these flimsy little saws that I would struggle with and end up with a half-assed tile job that I would hate for the rest of my days. That's the thing about tile. Once it's on, you're done. Cooked. Finis. If it's right, it's gorgeous, and if it's messed up, it's permanent.

If you paint something the wrong color, you go buy another bucket of paint and fix it. Sure, it's a pisser, but it's fairly easily fixed. Tile? Not so much. It doesn't help that in my last house, I subbed out the tile, and the guy who did it screwed it up. The floor of the shower leaked. He had used 'the wrong kind of grout'. I still don't understand that one to this day, but all I know is that he came back to 'feex it' and it did stop leaking, but the floor was (and probably still is) ugly. I cursed that man every time I got in that shower. Even without my contacts in, it looked like crap. What a lovely way to start every day in the house I worked so hard to renovate.

So this time, I'm the one who is going to either get it right or screw it up. I'm leaning more toward the 'get it right' option. I would rather take a month prepping and testing and practicing to make sure I get it right than rush to slap tile on the walls and screw it up. My dad has done tile before, so he's got some experience, and I have helped here and there. But I am nervous. This tile saw thing has got me even more nervous, but I think we have a solution coming....

After striking out at Lowe's and Home Desperate, I did a web search on tile saws, and viola! I found that bridge saw that I coveted. One of the things I liked about this saw when I looked at it over the summer, was the fact that it was rock-solid. It didn't wobble or wiggle. The table is stationary - the blade moves across the tile instead of moving the tile through the blade. The motor is still on the left, but because of the difference in cutting motion, this shouldn't be an issue. Tiny little details that, um, MATTER. Particularly when you are not terribly experienced at cutting tile. If I did it every day, perhaps I could manage to use one of those wobbly things and do OK, but I don't, and I don't have a ton of extra tiles to screw up on before I get one that's cut correctly. So stability and repeatability are essential.

I'm waiting for the saw to arrive, and most likely it won't get here until next week, which means yet another weekend goes by that I can't work on the tile. There are certainly other things that need doing, so I'll be busy regardless, but it is frustrating to be ready to take on one kind of job and then have to switch gears because you have crappy tools. Which is the gist of this blog post. To do a good job, you have to have good tools.

When I was a little kid, my dad had this wondrous thing called a Shop Smith. It was a hulking gray machine that lurked in our basement. He used it for everything. He remodeled their kitchen and built all the cabinets with it. He and a buddy of his found a stack of Kentucky cherry real cheap, and they built quite a few pieces of furniture out of that lumber, using my dad's Shop Smith. The only other power tools I remember him having were a power drill with its cast aluminum housing, and a router. He had scads of hand tools, but these were his go-to power tools.

Just for giggles, we looked the thing up online, and apparently the company still makes them. We also found quite a few for sale, used, on Ebay. We were both surprised. Dad bought his Mark IV before I was born. He and Mom didn't have a lot of money, and this was before credit cards were so commonly used. He went to Montgomery Ward and bought the Shop Smith for (as Mom remembers it) under $300.00. At the time they might have been much more, maybe $1,000.00, but this one had been repossessed or returned somehow. Either way, my dad had to buy it on time because they didn't have the money otherwise. He came home and told Mom he'd bought a saw. She was thinking hand saw - $40.00. She almost strangled him when he told her what he'd done. But that tool paid for itself time and again as he used it to remodel much of their house.

I was always amazed at how quickly he could transform that Shop Smith from one mode to the next. It could be a table saw, a jointer, a drill press, a lathe - you name it. When we left Lexington, KY, he gave the Shop Smith away, and neither of us had thought about it in years. We got talking about it after this tile saw debacle, and I said, you know, a lot of the tools now feel like toys. They don't feel like tools. I suppose the proliferation of us do-it-yourselfers has increased the demand for inexpensive power tools, so like any industry, you have companies that are willing to sell plastic toys with motors on them and call them tools.

Sometimes these items are useful, and when they are, hey, cheap is great - I'm a sale-searchin', discount-lovin' girl. BUT. When they don't work, they can wreak havoc on your time and your budget. They can destroy materials that may not be easily replaced, and they leave dents in the walls when you launch them in frustration. Trust me on that one!