Understanding Different Supplies At Work

Not Just for Concrete! Materials You Can Cut with Masonry Saws

Most people know and understand that when you want to cut concrete, you need a masonry saw to do it. However, masonry saws can be used to cut other materials as well. The following shows how these saws can cut other things. 

River Stone

River stone is a popular construction material, typically used to create chimneys and fireplaces, as well as cobbled walkways. If you want, you can create stone walls outside with river stone as well. There is just one caveat to using river stone; you have to cut it to fit the project. Larger river stones have to be cut in half or quarters before they are set into the mortar of your project. Medium and small river stones are often cut in half to maximize their use because river stone is not a cheap material. The only saw that can manage the job is a masonry saw with a diamond-toothed saw blade. 

Brick

Bricks are heavy and generally thick enough that you do not want to attempt to break them to make them fit into a wall. Additionally, bricks do not break or split evenly enough to accomplish what you want the broken pieces to do. When you are left with just broken bricks and you need to finish one last piece of a wall, you can use the broken pieces by cutting the uneven broken edges with a masonry saw or a reciprocating saw and a masonry blade. Now, these pieces are square enough that they can be used in your project to fill in the remaining areas and mortar the bricks into place. 

Asphalt

Black top, or bitumen asphalt, is poured and leveled over the top of a concrete slab. As such, you can use these types of saws to cut through the asphalt and the concrete slabs below. If you need to pull up a piece of the damaged parking lot or get to an underground utility line or industrial tank, then this is the ideal way to go about it because a saw used for masonry projects cannot cut so deep that it would damage these buried or covered structures. The saw would cut just deep enough to remove the asphalt and concrete layers so that they could be lifted out and removed, allowing you to get to the buried structures below with less mess and less destruction than a backhoe and/or a jackhammer. 


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