Cutting laminate flooring could be a little bit scary, don’t you think? They’re complicated pieces of material, meaning you’ll need extra equipment and expertise to get it right. It’s perfectly reasonable to be quite perplexed about them, but don’t you worry!
Our team came up with a step-by-step tutorial on how to cut laminate flooring with a circular saw for you and we’ve partnered it with a few tricks too!
Step by Step Guide: How to Cut Laminate Flooring With a Circular Saw
Before we start, I’d like to tell you that the best tool to use in cutting laminate flooring is a laminate flooring saw instead of a circular saw or a jigsaw. Then again, suppose the reason why you’re here is because you don’t have a specialized saw. But it is something worth taking note of, so take some time to think about this, too!
Step 1: Be Smart About Your Setup
Cutting laminate flooring with a circular saw particularly a powerful worm drive circular saw isn’t exactly difficult, but you’ll need some additional tools and a clean setup to prevent chipping and kickbacks. Prepare a laminate flooring board or a straight edge, a square, and two sawhorses to guide the circular saw around the laminate flooring.
Step 2: Mark Your Measurements
Once you’ve had your setup prepared, measure the required space needed to install the flooring board. Also, remember to leave a ¼” inch space for an extension gap while you’re at it. Doing so will make way for the spacers you’ll have to add later on.
When you’re sure about your measurements, flip your laminate flooring to the backside and follow through with the measurements. You can mark the board with a pencil.
Typically when we’re working with laminate flooring, you’d like to do this front side up. But because of the circular saw’s mechanism, it’s much safer and accurate to do otherwise.
Step 3: The Cutting Process
When you’re certain that your measurements are precise, you can now place these marked laminate flooring boards on your sawhorses. Make sure to place the flooring correctly across this setup to prevent the possibility of incurring injuries or kickbacks, too!
From here on, you can start running the circular saw and cut your laminate flooring pieces! Keep in mind that once you’re finished cutting, turn off the circular saw and let the blade completely stop before removing it from the cutting channels.
To help you with the cutting process, you can choose powerful corded circular saw we listed here.
Step 4: Check if It Fits
Set the laminate flooring piece you’ve just cut into the space you’ve prepared. If it fits, great job! You’re good to go, which means you may now snug the spacers in place and follow through with installing the pieces.
If it doesn’t fit, then don’t worry! You can always trim more pieces with the saw or use an electric hand sander with fine-grit sandpaper until it sits well in place.
Tips and Tricks
Use Quality Saws
When you’re cutting delicate pieces such as laminate flooring boards, a crucial factor is the type of equipment you’re using and your purpose for using them.
For circular saws, they’re best for making straight cuts in laminate floorings. Any other types of cuts will require a different tool. For example, a few curves in your laminate flooring will require a jigsaw.
Circular saws, however, have greater tendencies to kickback when being used with thinner materials. That said, we recommend you look for a circular saw with at least 18 teeth per inch to avoid chipping and kickbacks.
If you have difficulty looking for such a saw or you’re not familiar with the counts, anything with 100 teeth or more would be your best bet!
Cut From the Backside
Measure and mark the laminate flooring from the backside if you’re going to use a circular saw, and then cut from that side as well.
You should do this because the saw blades enter the wood from the underside and emerge at the top. Furthermore, most of the chipping occurs at the emergence stage. Its leading-edge should always contact the face of the board, too!
Don’t Forget To Factor in Extension Gaps
Laminate flooring expands with changes in humidity [1] and temperature levels, so it’s important to give the flooring boards some space to prevent any buckling. In this case, you must allocate ¼” inch of space during the measuring and cutting stages.
Before installation, you may add rubber spacers (they usually come in laminate flooring kits) along the walls to make sure that there’s an extension gap. Once you have installed the flooring, you may simply remove them so that everything has enough space to expand.
Conclusion
We understand that cutting laminating flooring with a circular saw isn’t the easiest task in the world.For one, both the equipment and materials needed are extremely delicate pieces that require some technique. But practice makes perfect!
We still recommend you look for a laminate flooring saw if you’re a bit too intimidated by the circular sawing technique; they are, after all, made for this exact purpose. But if you make a mistake while using a circular saw with laminate flooring, also remember that safety comes first; wear enough protective equipment!
For your shop flooring, you can check why LVT is the best flooring for your woodworking shop. Read next!
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