Tile saws, what you can expect...
Even though I have not had much luck in creating a tile etching that looked even halfway decent to this point, my tool-itis got the better of me while driving home from our Valentine's Day dinner. My SO has been guilt-tripping me... I needed to create some etched granite tiles because she needed gifts. This necessitated smaller tiles, both for (cheaper) practice and because not everyone wants a huge 12x12 tile on their coffee table. So I added a wet tile saw to the tool collection, and here are my thoughts on the purchase and what to look for when you go to purchase your own... feel free to add your own.
After a 10-15 minute discussion with a (surprisingly knowledgable) guy at Lowe's, I selected the QEP Professional Series Model #60083. It has a 7" blade, 1 HP motor, aiming laser, adjustable angle rip guide, and an adjustable angle aluminum table.
Price: This particular unit was $200, and I have to say I expected the build quality to be better for the price. I specifically chose to stay away from the cheap <$100 models for this reason... I didn't expect the solid machines $5k buys, but I suppose I was expecting the quality often seen with units approaching $1k. My bad.
Laser: I use it extensively on my wood saws for lining things up and trimming, so my expectations were this unit would be similar. I was annoyed to see it wasn't built into the table... it was built into the top of the finger guard :( It was powered by two button cells (not the 120V line supply), which means I'll have to replace them from time to time, and the plastic enclosure reminds of something I'd find on a child's toy from a dollar store. That said, I was quite surprised to find the laser lined up with the blade perfectly.
Splash Guard: Even though it's made of a clear plastic, you still cannot see the actual cut under it due to the water stream, so it may as well be opaque. It does an admirable job at keeping water spray to a minimum, but you have to adjust it perfectly to the height of the material if you want to cut down on water spray without binding on the tile. There is still a fine mist that comes out of the front and back, but I'm thinking some flexible rubber hanging down 1/8" would kill that completely.
The bracket did not line up with the cut in the tile, forcing me to flip the tile around. Unless you're perfect, this causes nubs of uneven tile where the two cuts meet up. I have since fixed that issue by Dremeling the table down where the bracket attaches, putting the bracket back in line with the blade.
Table: The table itself is aluminum, but it's about as light (cheap) a piece as you can imagine (I miss the days of billet aluminum tables) while still being able to do the job at hand. No frills here, but as long as it works, I suppose I can't really complain. One half of the table can be angled by way of built-in plastic legs for mitered edges. This is where a more solid table would be more confidence-inspiring.
"Wet" Saw: The "wet" portion of the saw amounts to a small tub of water the blade runs through (there is no active pumping of water). You fill it with about 1/2 gallon of water, and the overflow drain is literally a short tube with a hole at the top. You definitely want to put this someplace where water spillage won't affect anything, such as outside or on a concrete slab in the basement.
Water Collection: As the water is pulled up by the blade (it's amazing how much water a spinning flat blade pulls up on it's side!), it rolls off of the tile and into channels in the table. These drain into a channel surrounding the entire table and back into the tub... my complaint here is the outside channel edge isn't high enough, and if the saw isn't perfectly level, the amount of water that ends up in that outer channel can start to leak over the edge and onto the floor instead of ending up back in the tub.
Rip Guide: Made of aluminum that feels like metal-colored plastic, it does an okay job. It actually clamps to the edges of the table via a spring-loaded rod. The far end will shift about 1/16" after it has been clamped and sideways pressure is applied by the tile, but this can be taken into account when initially lining it up before clamping.
Adjustable Angle Guide: Made of cheap plastic and only a few inches in length, the guide rides along the rip guide and allows for angled cutting. It probably works well with smaller, lighter tiles, but with heavy 12x12 granite and marble tiles it leaves a lot to be desired. I didn't check the angle, but my quick view of it set to zero appeared to still have a few degrees of angle to it (something to consider with bigger tiles). For the large and heavy tiles, I just use the rip guard directly.
Power: 1 HP is not as much as you think when it comes to cutting tiles, so stay away from those 1/2 HP cheapies. With nothing more than a tile resting against it, my motor won't even budge if turned on from a standstill. Once running, it does a decent job at cutting with a constant push speed (I estimate I've been running at about 0.75"/second and haven't tried to go faster).
GFCI Circuit: There isn't one. There's a resettable circuit breaker (I think), but mixing water and electricity scares the you know what out of me. Plug this into a GFCI circuit whenever possible to avoid electrocution.
Material Size: With the rip guide in place, the largest piece that can be cut off is roughly 9" (though the piece being cut can be as large as you can handle). The cut off piece could be larger than 9" if you set up some form of external guide (or just winged it by eye), but this table is more than adequate for cutting down 12x12 tiles into 6x6 squares.
Overall, I'm happy with the purchase in the sense that it does what I need without costing me an arm and a leg. If I believed my tile work would be significant I would have purchased a beefier machine with a more solid table and built-in features, but I didn't want to go too cheap and have a complete piece of junk. Knowing what I know now, I'd probably make the same decision, but it hasn't been without its cons. As always, YMMV...
