Which side to cut the countertop

The manufacture of kitchen furniture requires certain knowledge and skills. One of the difficult moments in this area is the subtleties with chipboard. And if a simple board or chipboard can be easily sanded and coated with any material if necessary, then chipboard is already coated, and it is unlikely to be replaced.

How and how to cut a countertop without chips at home, and what points should I pay attention to?

What tools to use?

If the question arose of how to cut the countertop, then first of all, you need to decide on the cutting tool, and more often than not, several tools are used.

For example, using a circular saw, you can get the perfect result, but this is quite an expensive pleasure, because a quality tool costs a lot of money. Therefore, this unit can be found mainly only in special factories.

angle grinder. has similarities with the previous tool, but the result will be far from ideal. When working with an angle grinder, many chips can be formed.

Usually, to cut a countertop, two main professional and interchangeable tools are used. a jigsaw and a jigsaw.

Specialists in the field of construction canvases are separated or, as they are also called, files into two main categories:

• tearing a little on both sides;
• tearing strongly, but only on one side.

In the case of work with a countertop, you will need the option that tears on one side.

Before starting the main work, it is necessary to sharpen the tool blade well so that chips do not form during the work. A sharpened blade, before you start directly sawing the material, you need to make a groove, the depth of which will be about 2-3 mm. This will make it possible to perform work without injuries and chips.

Nuances of processing chipboard

First of all, we will consider all the materials and tools that will be needed for work:

• the chipboard itself;
• pre-sharpened blade;
• jigsaw;
• common jigsaw.

By the way, particleboards in the furniture industry and construction began to be used only in 1940 in the United States of America, but after a fairly short time, the popularity of this material increased and spread throughout the world. Thanks to this, the industry took a significant step forward, and all sorts of varieties of this material appeared.

One of the most popular and frequently used types is chipboard, which is not just a product of pressing sawdust with glue, amenable to high temperatures, but also plays the role of additional chemical and physical protection in the form of a melamine film.

Usually, when cutting a chipboard, no complications arise, but with a chipboard this seemingly simple process can be complicated. The fact is that often on the countertops there is a coating from the manufacturer with HPL multilayer plastic. This significantly complicates the sawing process. This coating can vary significantly in quality and in basic properties, and this coating is not always polymer. Therefore, when processing this material, there are many different nuances.

A step-by-step description of the process itself:

1. Using a well-sharpened blade, a groove of 2-3 mm deep is produced. In the presence of a polymer coating of various kinds, it is recommended to warm the blade slightly, and then immediately begin to use it directly. Due to the emerging pressure of cold steel on hard plastic, even if the sharpening is very good, minor microcracks and chips may occur, which is best avoided if possible.
2. Using a tool called a jigsaw you need to carefully and smoothly make an incision. During operation, it is important to carefully adjust the direction of the blade. If there are places where the direction changes, it is better to use an ordinary hand jigsaw as a secondary, auxiliary tool. Or you can use the thinnest nail file in a jigsaw. But this is not always convenient.

Video: Which side to cut the countertop

After the work done, you can proceed to the final stage of sawing chipboard.

Final stage

At the final stage, another tool must be used. To do this, you need a rasp or file, sandpaper, a GOI post, duct tape and a decorative corner from duralumin.

First of all, it is necessary to polish the tree. For this purpose, you can use a rasp or file with which you want to remove excess. After that, using a grinding machine or using ordinary sandpaper (nulevka is suitable), bring the tree into a nice view. It is recommended that this work be carried out even if you are not going to do anything after it. Due to the torn elements of the tree, the material will attract moisture much faster, which will provoke faster wear of the material.

Having brought the tree back to normal, it is necessary to bring plastic to the same state. Usually it is enough to use special polishes. But if one is not available, then you should not buy a new one, since for processing one countertop you will need quite a bit of this tool, and then throw away the AL-KO polish, and not economically.

An ideal option for processing plastic is GOI paste. It is available in almost every home, while it is an absolutely universal tool and quite effective.

Even if the cut was successful, and high-quality grinding, it is better to play it safe so that even small millimeters do not make themselves felt in the future. Therefore, it is recommended to use a special furniture corner from duralumin for decoration. It should be attached in its place, while the appearance will gain accuracy.

Another little tip: when sawing a countertop at home, you can use a guide tape with an adhesive layer, with which the blade does not deviate from the route.

How to cut a countertop using a circular saw

When working with a tool called a circular saw, you need a fine saw blade with a small tooth. A circular saw is more convenient than a jigsaw to make long straight cuts. However, more chips are formed during such work, since the side with the teeth cuts into the material and breaks off the pieces.

But even when working with a finishing disk, many chips are formed on one side of the countertop, which must then be subjected to lengthy processing. over, it is not a fact that after processing there will be no millimeter chips or microcracks, which in the future will render the material unusable or have strong moisture permeability.

Therefore, this option is best not to use for cutting countertops. Better leave using a circular saw for another job. If this is the only option for you, then you will have to work hard at the stage of final processing of sawn material.

Milling cutter

The milling cutter allows you to get the cleanest edge of the workpiece, while the quality is not so easy to distinguish from the formatter, and sometimes it will be even better.

First you need to cut the workpiece with a jigsaw, indenting from the marking line by 2-3 mm, and then align the line according to the template. Usually, a second piece of chipboard is used for this, sawn on a formatter, so that it is a suitable size.

It is necessary to use a copy cutter, that is, one with a bearing. So you can get a very clean cut. Among the disadvantages of working with a milling cutter, a lot of hassle can be distinguished, since there is a need for precise marking, for preliminary filing of blanks and for setting templates for the milling cutter.

To summarize

If the question of cutting the countertops was before you, then you should not be afraid, since it is completely possible to do it yourself. If there is an opportunity, it is better, of course, to use the services of specialists and take the material for processing to the workshop, where all the work will be carried out on special equipment and especially high quality.

In the case of sawing countertops at home, so that there are no chips, use a suitable tool. a jigsaw, adhering to the maximum accuracy and accuracy when working with the workpiece.