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I bought a Harbor Freight hammer drill (SDS-Max) to chip up a mosaic floor in the bathroom. I also bought a three piece chisel set from H-F for $20.00. The hammer drill seems to be working fine and only has to last for another 5 square feet of flooring. But the 3" wide chisel's blade snapped off from apparently metal fatigue or a poor forging.
There is a H-F less than 5 miles from my house and I could have gone back to buy another H-F chisel, but instead I ordered this Bosch 2" from Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009H...UTF8&psc=1
I was surprised how much easier the tiles chipped up with the new blade. I don't know if it is the 2" width or the grind angles but the tiles came up at least three times as fast.
If you are chipping up mosaic porcelain tile, I recommend this blade.
Note: The 1950s era porcelain is much harder than the stuff I've seen in the stores. It causes sparks when hit with the hammer drill. And the adhesive is particularly strong. These tiles have to be chipped up piece by piece unlike the tiles on the make-over shows where the tiles practically fall off on their own.
I will have a few divots to fill and one significant void where a partition used to sit. But most of the cement floor is intact and ready for tile.
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I chiseled up an entire house full of 1/2" marble tile from a friends house. I guess the previous owners liked marble but it stains easily...
I started off using a Makita SDS but it overheated and started puking it's grease after just a few square feet. Picked up the $65 on sale hammer drill at HF (the bigger one not the sawsall shaped one). Went to work and did the entire house without a hiccup. It didn't overheat or puke it's grease like the junk Makita one did. Very good tool. I was using a 4" unknown brand chisel from the borgs.
Allot of the tile contractors around here have switched from their bosch to the HF hammer drills as well because they are more reliable than their expensive bosch units which are always in the shop being repaired. Pay for the extended warranty on the tool and if it fails they just give you a new one on site. Much better for a contractor that needs his tools today.
Oh and yeah those HF chisels are junk. Their air chisels are junk as well.
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12-16-2019, 10:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-16-2019, 10:44 AM by Cooler.)
(12-16-2019, 10:04 AM)Robert Adams Wrote: I chiseled up an entire house full of 1/2" marble tile from a friends house. I guess the previous owners liked marble but it stains easily...
I started off using a Makita SDS but it overheated and started puking it's grease after just a few square feet. Picked up the $65 on sale hammer drill at HF (the bigger one not the sawsall shaped one). Went to work and did the entire house without a hiccup. It didn't overheat or puke it's grease like the junk Makita one did. Very good tool. I was using a 4" unknown brand chisel from the borgs.
Allot of the tile contractors around here have switched from their bosch to the HF hammer drills as well because they are more reliable than their expensive bosch units which are always in the shop being repaired. Pay for the extended warranty on the tool and if it fails they just give you a new one on site. Much better for a contractor that needs his tools today.
Oh and yeah those HF chisels are junk. Their air chisels are junk as well.
I was not surprised about the durability issue. I was surprised how much easier the tiles came up with the Bosch chisel. My H-F hammer drill is working just fine.
I like that I can change the angle of the handle. A nice feature.
But it is heavy and a bear for walls. For floors the weight is not an issue.
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I've always hated chipping up tile floors. Once on concrete, coupla times on plywood/concrete backer board. Used the HF small hammer chisel all three times. That part worked well.
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The house was built in 1953. There is a wood subfloor and about 1" thick concrete over that. I did the other bathroom also. I used self-leveling concrete to fill the large void and smoothed out some for the divots. I also had to use a grinder to smooth out some of the concrete. But that was my bad.
Thank goodness for dust masks. A lot of dust gets kicked up.
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What's really bad is chipping up tile over wood sub floor where it has been done right IE the installer put a skim coat of mud between the tile board and the plywood subfloor... This is one of those things where I think it's probably better to not do it right.
Here 98% of houses are slab on grade and the only houses that are pier and beam were built before 1970. The big fun with fully tiled house is removing the grout... Rented a floor buffer with a dynabride head on it. Once you got it started and got through the grout to the concrete you could control it for the most part but using that thing is exactly like the cartoons. If you aren't careful and very strong and a big heavy guy that handle will get ripped right out of your hand and it will fly around until it hits something either the wall or you. It will hurt when it hits you too.
