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Diamonds
Are a
Guy's
Best Friend
when they're
in a saw blade
by Christina
Camara
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Cutting
lines, grooves and control joints with diamond blades is nothing
new for concrete contractors, but enterprising craftsmen have
been putting their creativity to the test by using the blades
to produce decorative borders, graphic designs or V-shaped
grooves that look like they were hand-tooled.
Tom Ralston, a third-generation concrete
contractor from Santa Cruz, Calif, most often makes decorative
saw cuts on interior floors in grid patterns (two-by-two-foot
squares or three-by-three-foot diagonals) but says diamond
blades can be used to cut any variety of designs.
"You can slice and dice a floor
up like a boarding house pie," he says.
Diamond blades can be used to cut both
green and cured concrete, using a variety of right-angle grinders,
handheld circular saws, Dremel tools or walkbehind saws. A
variety of blades are available in the market, each serving
its own purpose.
Ralston uses Norton/Clipper Corp.'s
Slab Crab, a new saw with wide rubber wheels that allows him
to cut perfectly straight lines; a Soff-Cut saw for structural
cuts in green concrete; a four inch grinder to make circular
patterns; and a Dremel tool.
He likes to get out on the slab
days after it's poured, lay out the design on his hands and
knees, snap the lines using orange chalk - which doesn't stain
the concrete - and make his cuts, often by hand. The saw cuts
can act as small dams, making it easy to use different acid
stains in the design without the colors bleeding into one
another. For example, he created a unique design on a residential
entryway using Italian marble in one section, black acid stain
in another, antique amber with bits of real copper in another,
and deep score joints filled with copper epoxy.
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