Stop & Start Cuts | Super Compact

Posted on by

Chris shows us how easy it is to start and stop decorative concrete cuts, without ever having to worry about over or under-cuts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I’m Chris Mirabal, senior tech advisor for Engraveacrete. Today, I’m going to show you how easy it is to engrave straight lines trackfree in existing concrete.

Today we’re going to be using the Super Compact. This is the most versatile concrete engraving tool on the market. We can attach it to a tracking system to cut circular-brick, straightline brick, cobblestone, but today we’re going to be running it trackfree to cut straight lines.

On the front of the machine, you have a pointer that flips up as you come in towards the wall. On the back, you have a pointer, which whenever you snap a chalk line you can cut straight down that chalk line trackfree by lining up the front and rear pointer. The front T-pinhandle is a depth adjustment, controlling your depth of how deep you’re going into the existing concrete.

On the side, you have a Contour-Following-Wheel, which keeps the blade at a level plane to compensate for where you get your highs and lows in the concrete. It just keeps it at a nice, level position. You have a dust port that controls about 95 percent of the dust.

The nice part about this tool is that you can run it trackfree standing up. You’re off your hands and knees you get less wear and tear on your body. It is a power tool, and you do want to remember you to have proper safety equipment. You need to have some earplugs and some glasses.

We’ve already cut a border one foot from the wall all the way around our room. We’ve also laid out our entire tile grid into a 45 degree angle pattern to create a diagonal tile look in the concrete.

One of the fears that many people who are just getting started in concrete engraving have is starting and stopping cuts. They are worried about overcutting or undercutting. So let’s look at a quick trick we use to prevent overcutting.

Simply take a framing square and lay the long leg along the line that we’re going to be cutting, setting the angle of the square right at the point where we want our cut to stop. We’ll draw a line that is perpendicular to our cut line. Now we’ll take our machine and we’ll line it up on our chalk line. We will run our machine until we get to the marks that we have on the side of the machine.

Once we line up our mark with our chalk line that we just created, we’ll stop at that point. That will give us maybe a slight undercut, or perfect. If we have a slight undercut, we have other tools like the Wasp that we can finish the line up with.

Just before we get started, I drew a line for our starting point. I’m going to simply pull the Super Compact back, lining it up, and making sure that I’m lined up with my chalk line. Make sure you use your earplugs and safety glasses.

It’s as easy as that. You’ll have a perfectly straight line, stop right at the point you want, and anyone can do this.

For more information, call 1-800-884-2114, or go to our website, www.engraveacrete.com.