We are working on a church project where we are hanging Hardiplank as board and baton. This means that we must rip the batons to 2″ wide. Needless to say, we have hundreds of feet of ripping to do and do not think that shears would be appropriate. I would like to use a circular saw with a dust collection system. My question, what blade to use. I hear that standard carbide work but wear fast, Vermont American makes a carbide blade for Hardiplank for about $20 and both DeWalt and Hitachi make a diamond blade for Hardiplank at about $50. Any experience with these various blades?
Thanks!
Bill
Replies
The Hitachi blade works great, don't use a reg. carbide framing blade they wear way to fast. I don't have any experience with the other two brands.
A word of caution *G* do not hit a nail with the hardi blade! I did this yesterday, the sacrificial board I was using for support had a nail or two in it and I got careless.... I screwed the pooch and wrecked a brand new 50 dollar blade, one knick of the nail made it completly useless.
I did notice HD out here was closing out there Hitachi blades at 50 a pop versus the 70 they had them going for.
Last month I ripped about 500' with a diamond blade in my bosch table saw with a vac attached and it worked great. We tried the hardi carbide blade but the cut was too rough.
................. Rik.................
hitachi hardi blade. i've used mine on about 50 jobs and it still cuts fine, well worth the $60 or whatever i paid for it. as far as dust goes, i just make sure i'm upwind and exhaling. it'll even cut a 2X4 when you're too lazy to change blades for one cut ;).
Yeah, stick a Hitachi Hardi-blade in a table saw. It'll take you forever any other way. Has anyone thought of purchasing the prime trim 1x2's to use as the batts? Thats quicker yet. Where are you located? I'm supposed to help some guys from a church put up Hardi-plank here in the near future, myself.
I rip 4 pieces at a time and have used a cheap diamond concrete blade for years at a time before replacing.
ANDYSZ2
I MAY DISAGREE WITH WHAT YOUR SAYING BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT.
Remodeler/Punchout
Edited 5/17/2004 8:44 am ET by ANDYSZ2
I am in the Milwaukee area. If you want to come help with the Hardiplank, we would welcome your assistance!
Bill
I was looking at the Hardie website and they say nothing about cutting this stuff with a wet saw- just a diamond or abrasive blade on a regular circular saw, with water spray on the blade for dust suppression. Anybody done it? Anyone spoken to Hardie and been told that you absolutely shouldn't do it? Anybody imagine a good reason why it would be dumb to do it? The product looks like a really great option, but dust control would be a big issue for me- my neighbours would be really annoyed if I used something which generated clouds of dust every time I cut it...
At the last JLCLive at Portland, OR, the Hardi folks did a demo. There was an audience of about 50 sitting about 10 feet in front of the area where they were cutting the HardiPlank siding. They used Makita cement board blades in a Makita table saw and a regular Makita portable circular saw. They ran a flexible plastic hose (the pleated kind that comes on many vacuums) from the dust port on the saws to a 5 gallon bucket with a hole in the lid. As far as I could tell, there was nothing in the bucket. There was almost no dust. I was really surprised as I was standing about 5 feet from the bucket and I noticed no dust in the air.
The person doing the demonstration said he preferred the Makita cement blade to the shears (which they also had) because it was considerably faster. Didn't ask him about diamond blades, but previous Breaktime threads have indicated that you get more dust with dry diamond blades than with the cement blades - don't recall any previous mentions of wet sawing the stuff.
If you wanted to be even more careful with the dust, you could probably put some water in the bucket and stick the end of the hose into it. Or perhaps you could fill the bucket with some type of filtering material, or clamp an automotive type dry air filter onto the end of the hose.
However, from what I saw at the demonstration, I would not worry about the amount of dust being kicked out by the cement blade. If 50 people could sit through an hour demonstration of cutting various pieces of cement board without complaint in an enclosed area, I doubt that a neighbor would find it objectionable...
So they just hooked the saw's dust port up to a bucket with a piece of hose? No ShopVac etc? And there wasn't a blinding, choking cloud of dust? Wow- even when we cut fibreglass grating dry with an abrasive blade we get a cloud of dust, so we cut it wet- and it's full of fibreglass resin as a binder. When cutting a cementitious product like this, I'd expect a lot of dust even with a ShopVac there to catch as much as it could using the saw's dust port. You'd think that a lot of dust would be generated below the work and wouldn't be available for the dust vent to catch it, even with a vacuum to help out!
Think I'll buy a piece and do some experimenting before I try to cut it dry. But thanks for the info- sounds like it IS possible to cut it dry without generating clouds of dust!
Yeah, no shop vac. I didn't pay much attention to the table saw but they were ripping and rabbiting Hardi trim with it. I don't know what model Makita circular saw they were using, it might have had better dust handling than most. I think there is a special circular saw for trapping more dust than the standard one. I think Mike Smith has indicated he has one and likes it (I could be wrong on my attribution here.) The one I have bookmarked is the Makita dust collecting circular saw, but I think there might be another one out there:
http://www.coastaltool.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/a/makita/5057kb.htm?L+coastest+snwt4987ff5bbd5b+1084973975
> preferred the Makita cement blade to the shears
I was working on a Habitat house over the weekend, and they had a brand new Kett shears. It fell apart after a couple hours.
-- J.S.
I should point out that we have been using the PC shears designed for cement board with great success for cross cutting and cutouts. A saw may be slightly faster but the shears are impressive. My concern with the sawing is that we literally have several thousand feet of ripping to do which would not be practical with hand held shears.
It sounds like the diamond blades designed for Hardiplank are pretty effective. I think I will give one a try.
thanks for your input,
Bill
I would recommend you try the carbide tipped circular saw blades before shelling out for a diamond blade. Reportedly, the carbide tipped cement board blades cut faster and with less dust than the diamond blades. (Don't know this first hand, however, as I will not get started with my Hardiplank construction until later this summer...)
There is an article on cutting fiber cement board at Tools of the Trade:
http://www.toolsofthetrade.net/articles/showarticle.asp?articleID=1517&position=0&type=article
Here is another listing of the Makita saws with dust collection; this one has a small 4" saw in addition to the 7.25" saw:
http://www.mytoolstore.com/makita/mak02-04.html
I am sure that the saw the Hardi rep demonstrated had a Makita blade - and the picture of the dust collection circular saw shows the Makita name on the blade. However, when I search the Makita website and the Internet, I can't find any listings for the blade itself. The Makita section of My Tool Store lists the following blade:
http://www.mytoolstore.com/tenryu/fiberc.html
Can't give any opinions on either the blade or the store...
So this very day, I became a believer! I've done quite a bit of cement board siding.
I've cut it with shears and a diamond masonry blade 'till today.
Awhile back I won a Hitachi siding cutter blade in a lumber yard drawing and it set gathering dust in my shop. But I'm currently siding a new house with Certainteed's prestained plank which is a little touchy to deal with. Even the diamond blade tended to cause some minor chipping of the surface on rip cuts.
So just for the hell of it, I hung this new 4 (four) tooth blade on my saw and it was great! Smooth, fast, easy to control cuts....on repetitive lengths I was stacking 7 planks and I swear it cut faster than it did through one plank.
My blade was a freeby, and I hear they're a little spendy, but they're also supposed to be long lasting.
Ditto. Extra money is worth it. The $25 blades are junk. Too much wobble. My experience anyway. Perfect opportunity for an old table saw and an outfeed table, and a can of spray silicone to keep the top moving. All that dust can get to grinding in a hurry. The silicone keeps the boards from bogging down.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain
How is that silicone going to effect any paint you may want to put on?
Joe H
I dunno. I always cut face up to avoid tearing it out :-)
Seriously though, never been an issue. Not like you're making the thing sopping wet. Just keeping the back of the board sliding through. "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain