Or was I just naive?
I was fitting a 5" extractor duct, and figured I should hire a diamond core to cut throught the brick, as it would be the easiest method and leave a nice neat hole.
Went to my local Brandons hire and got a 127mm bit, cost virtually nothing to hire, but £12+VAT per half mm for wear. I figured one hole through a single skin of brick wont use more than half a mil.
Turned into a complete pain, admittedly my 650W DeWalt wasn't really up to it so it took ages, but when finished the hole was only 125mm diameter! Had to get the angle grinder into the hole and open it up before the duct would go through.
All Brandons would say is "it's got 127mm stamped on it, that's the size it cuts". Then they charged me a whole mm of wear. Now I measured it when I got it, and the lugs were just under 2mm high. They wrote 1.5mm on the sheet so I thought fine. Measured the lugs again before I took it back, and it was just over 1.5mm, so I thought that's easily under half a mil. When I complained, they said they I wasn't measuring it correctly, as the diamond doesn't go all the way down the lug. But if it's reduced in size by less than half a mil, how can I possibly have used more than that?
So I've spent £30 and ages on it, and it would have been easier and neater to just have drilled a circle of holes and cleaned it up with the grinder.
But aside from my rant, my question is.... Is that what I should have expected from a diamond core, or are the hire shop a bunch of ****? I've never used them before (diamond cores or Brandons) so I want to know which one to avoid in future
I was fitting a 5" extractor duct, and figured I should hire a diamond core to cut throught the brick, as it would be the easiest method and leave a nice neat hole.
Went to my local Brandons hire and got a 127mm bit, cost virtually nothing to hire, but £12+VAT per half mm for wear. I figured one hole through a single skin of brick wont use more than half a mil.
Turned into a complete pain, admittedly my 650W DeWalt wasn't really up to it so it took ages, but when finished the hole was only 125mm diameter! Had to get the angle grinder into the hole and open it up before the duct would go through.
All Brandons would say is "it's got 127mm stamped on it, that's the size it cuts". Then they charged me a whole mm of wear. Now I measured it when I got it, and the lugs were just under 2mm high. They wrote 1.5mm on the sheet so I thought fine. Measured the lugs again before I took it back, and it was just over 1.5mm, so I thought that's easily under half a mil. When I complained, they said they I wasn't measuring it correctly, as the diamond doesn't go all the way down the lug. But if it's reduced in size by less than half a mil, how can I possibly have used more than that?
So I've spent £30 and ages on it, and it would have been easier and neater to just have drilled a circle of holes and cleaned it up with the grinder.
But aside from my rant, my question is.... Is that what I should have expected from a diamond core, or are the hire shop a bunch of ****? I've never used them before (diamond cores or Brandons) so I want to know which one to avoid in future
