For safety reasons it is advisable to wear safety glasses to protect your eyes from any fragments of stone

 

You don’t need any fancy, specialist ‘mosaic’ nippers to start off with. An ordinary drop forged, carbide tipped tile nippers from a DIY/hardware shop will do. Mostly the more expensive nippers are for use with glass.

Some have thicker, rubber handles which you may find better if you have bigger hands but see if you can try a few out. Whatever size your hand is you may find that you get more ‘feel’ with nippers with thinner grips.

 

 

You may not realise it but a lot of nippers have a very slight 'tilt' on the blade. I've exaggerated the angle on the line drawing but you should be able to see the angle on the blades.
It's very slight but if you're cutting thin stone then you need to take this into account and angle the blades accordingly otherwise your cuts may follow the downward angle.

 

 

 

 

Using a denser material such as stone as opposed to ceramic tiles means you need to find the most effective way to cut to lessen any possible strain on your wrist.

Hold the nippers with the ‘overhang’ part of the blades facing across your body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The correct hand position is to hold the nippers toward the end of the handles. This allows you to exert the most pressure for the minimum effort. The closer your hand is to the blades the more force you need to use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hand is too high up meaning you have to use more force to cut.

This may not make too much of a difference with occasional use but if you do a lot of cutting of hard materials over time you will be putting too much strain on your wrist.

Your hand may move up during your work without you realising it. Just check every so often and change your hand position if needed.Remember: You’re not cutting the stone rather you are sending a fracture across its surface

 

 

Stone is a natural material and different types of stones will cut easier than others. Travertine is a very soft stone and cuts very easily the drawback being that it crumbles easily. Granite, a very hard stone (and not one I use or recommend in mosaic work for that reason). This cuts well but you need to use a lot of force to make a cut. Marble is somewhere in between these 2, good to cut but some types have fracture lines in them which means they will cut along these lines and not where you want the cut.

Place the stone tile between the blades and hold in place, remove your hand away from the blades.

 

 

 

Some people hold their hand under the nippers to catch the cut pieces, watch when you do this as it is quite easy if you’re not paying attention to catch your skin in between the blades!

 

 

 

This shows a 5mm piece of polished granite being cut. The harder the stone the less you cover with the blades. N.B. I don’t use granite unless I really have too, it’s just too hard. And if I do then I will use a hammer and hardie to cut it.

 

 

 

 

You only need to place the blades half way across the stone. Again as with the hard stone you're aiming to send a fracture across the tile.

 

This is a 5mm piece of pink Travertine. Very crumbly you have to have the blades across the whole width so you are able to control the whole of the cut. If it will cut with the blades further back then treat as medium density.

Assuming you are working with tesserae that are all an average of 10mm squares then during your work on the mosaic there are 3 other shapes you will need to cut, half cuts, triangles and keystones.

When you need to cut one of these make it easy on yourself by picking out a decent sized square piece. Trimming something of 1 -2mm is a lot harder than cutting a square in half.

Easy enough cut down the centre. Bear in mind that this is as small a piece as you want to use in your mosaic.

 

 

 

 

 

Diagonally across the tesserae, with marble avoid using pieces that are veined as the cut will follow the vein.

 

 

 

Pick a tesserae that is slightly longer, i.e. more rectangular in shape, this way you avoid it becoming just another triangle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The more stone you cut the more you get used to the different ways to cut. Try as many different ones as you can to get more experience.

 

 

© Lawrence Payne 2012