F cement guillotine shears

[Jolly Builders Inc]

Has anyone had good luck with the bench shears for fiber cement siding, Malco, Bullet or any others. Thanks Jolly B

[gary robertson]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

do yourself a lot of good stay away from fiber cement all ready finding mold under it big time

[davenorthup]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Yes the guillotine shears work very well and are worth their weight. Anything you can do to eliminate the dust is a good thing.

Drainage planes are a great thing as well..

[Hoover]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Wow, you joined in '04 and this is only your 4th post? Join in more, we're a fun bunch.

Dave's already chimed in, I know he's talked about them in the past as being pretty good. I've never used the guillotine but I've used the shears snapper shears that are basically a corded drill body with the shear head. Those work very well and are completely dustless. I know kett made some, dewalt/porter cable and pacific tool (pac tool) has the snapper shears. I think kett uses their own head, I believe the dewalt/pc ones use the snapper shear pac tool head and blades. The pac tool head/blades are reversible so you get much more life out of the blades.

[davenorthup]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Hoover I have the Porter Cable shears as well. I now only use them to cut cement backer board for my tile projects.

The guillotines are 100% the way to go if you are doing a house.

[rogerg]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

do yourself a lot of good stay away from fiber cement all ready finding mold under it big time

Whoa! Tell me more. Who. What.When. Where and Why. Got a customer who leaning towards Hardi.

roger

[mdannolfo]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

I have the Bullet shears. They work well and save time and money. Not the sturdiest made tool I have ever come across though. They are a bit on the flimsy side really and the handle lock broke the second day my guys tried to undo it. Now a bungee holds the handle down when not in use. I think some of the Malco shears look a bit more heavy duty. I have the pc shears as well and they are slow but work ok for rip cuts. It helps with mine to flip the "board" over and cut from the back.

[TSJHD1]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

I can't agree with the guillotine shears being great. I used someone else's set last FC job I did, so I can't say what brand it was, but they didn't cut a true 90. It wasn't off by a huge amount, and you could compensate by pushing the handle laterally as you brought it down, but that was a pita. When you pushed the handle tight to the left (or right, whichever way it was, I don't remember), it would cut a true 90. So it wasn't like it cut 90 degrees, plus-or-minus a degree, it was more like it cut between 90 and 88. And I'm not even sure the exact amount it varied; I just remember not liking it.

So I recommend using it to make some test cuts before buying it.

But other than that, its a great way to cut FC siding, since you build a cut table, on which you can screw down some sort of stop block to enable yourself to make repetitious cuts of the same length, such as between windows.

Using that tool and shears, and you have no dust.

Whoa! Tell me more. Who. What.When. Where and Why. Got a customer who leaning towards Hardi.

If I had anybody that wanted Hardie now, I'd talk to Mark Parlee. He has seen a lot of jobs and can give you some great advice.

Tom

[davenorthup]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Tom that is too bad. Likely brand dependent. Mine cut true.

I have a recessed table that mine fits in. I took that safety lock thing off on day one; but mine do not have a spring keeping the handle up AFAIK.

I forget what brand I have and I am too lazy to look.

[TSJHD1]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Dave- It had a recessed table as well, which was great. If I was going to have used it for more than one job, I would have mounted back stops along the entire length of the table, that would have been on a slight angle, so that the cutting blade would have then cut a 90, plus or minus whatever the slop was. At least then I wouldn't have needed to push on the handle to get a true 90 cut, and the amount of variance would have been cut in half. That, I could have lived with.

And now that I think about it, I want to say it was Malco, since everything else they sold when it came to roofing and siding tools was Malco stuff. (Roof Center)

Tom

[tom dickey]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

How many peices can you cut at once in the gullitine the last fc job I did we used the little rigid saw and we could cut 4 or 5 peices at a time.

[chuckwoodchuck]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

The Makita fiber cement shears are great. They stay true and you can reverse the blades when you need some fresh cutting surface.

[davenorthup]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

Tom - I mostly install prefinished so it is one at a time...

I went and looked - http://www.amazon.com/Bullet-Tools-5...ews/B002O15VR0
is what I use.

[Ray Dru]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

We are about 40% through installing 75,000 sq. ft. of prepainted Hardi. Our favorite tool for crosscut is the guillotine shear, we have the bullet. I change blades about every two weeks and have replaced it once allready and we have to replace the two end bolts a couple of times. For ripping we use the 5" saw made for Hardi, forgot the name, once you get used to it being a left hand saw it works well and you can get the blade to last 3 or 4 days, I get them sharpened about 4 to 5 times. We have the motorized shear, but rarely use it.

All tools we have found for these type of products are lightweight and you will replace them often.

On mold, sheetrock, wood, fiberboard, what doesn't it grow on??? It's what caused the problem that needs looking at.
Ray

[dgbldr]

Re: F cement guillotine shears

I'm interested in the guillotines as well, and I see the Bullet 513 DaveN uses is no longer available. Does anyone know if their #113 or #213 are the replacement(s) for the 513?
We've never used them, sounds like we should get some if we can figure out which ones are the good ones :)