If you’ve ever had to slug it out with a wall to remove drywall for a remodeling project, you can appreciate how tedious it is. Faced with this problem on a recent job, I came up with the following method to cut the drywall into manageable chunks.
As shown in the drawing, I affixed an old, general purpose wood-cutting blade to my reciprocating saw (after unplugging it, of course). Then I pulled the saw’s drive shaft outward, to the limit of its travel, and marked a cutline on the blade 1/2 in. from the shoe. This represented the thickness of the drywall I was removing. Next I used a pair of cable pliers to cut the blade.
In use, I simply held the saw against the wall with its shoe flush against the surface. As I moved it up and down the wall, it punched a series of closely spaced holes in the drywall. Studs didn’t interfere — the saw just passed right over them. In no time I had a tidy pile of ex-walls, without a cloud of asphyxiating dust.
Patrick C. Perry, Lakewood, CO
