I've never used any mechanical saws before, all my cutting has been with the hammer and hardie up to now. For the my Roman mosaic copies I buy pre cut marble tesserae (tiles), all with a uniform 10mm thickness but an irregular profile.
The finished mosaic looks as if all the tesserae have been hand cut instead of the modern 10mm x 10mm x 10mm cubes and they have been tumbled so no grinding down needed. It would be a whole lot better if I can cut my own, it's cheaper plus I do the quality control.

So.... I can get 98mm x 98mm x 8mm tumbled marble tiles in the colours I need. I cut them into strips varying in width 8mm - 12mm. Then cut the strips into 8mm - 12mm 'cubes'.
Each kilo of marble gets me about 350 tesserae, I need about 7,000 per square metre.

What's the best wet saw for this? I'll try to hire one first to see how I get on. It would also need to cut harder material such as Verde Guatamala.

Bit of a long post but there's only one supplier of this cut and it just occured to me to cut my own rather than getting them in from Italy.

Cheers (I've tried to post an image but I can only get this link)
ROMAN MOSAIC WORKSHOPS - Buy marble

In all honesty.. the Dewalt D24000 is the best in the uk for bespoke work..

Ditto what Dave says but i think breakages could be very high cutting that small.

Do you get breakages across the fault lines in the marble or is there a lot of blade vibration? I know it's hard to judge without having tried it but what do you think might the percentage of breakages be?

If he tops it with the Montolit DNA blade then maybe not... i have been trimming 600x400 x 32mm thick travertine pavers to size and i was cutting 3mm slithers of without breaking them..

Originally Posted by Musivarius

Do you get breakages across the fault lines in the marble or is there a lot of blade vibration? I know it's hard to judge without having tried it but what do you think might the percentage of breakages be?

Blade vibration is virtually Zero..

If you are close enough to tradetilers unit he has one set up yo can try..

Unit 13 Hinckley Business Park
Brindley Road
Hinckley. LE10 3BY. United Kingdom
Map of how to find us here

Originally Posted by Dave

If he tops it with the Montolit DNA blade then maybe not... i have been trimming 600x400 x 32mm thick travertine pavers to size and i was cutting 3mm slithers of without breaking them..

I've had similar size slither cuts when I've had a new cpc blade in my DW200LP cutter.

32mm thick doug..?

The marble i was cutting recently was pretty cheap stuff so i wasnt having much joy although i wasnt in need of small slithers.
Travertine i have used recently presented no promblems and as Dave said 3mm slithers were coming off clean....I guess the quality of the stone will be a major factor

Thanks! I get this going at it will make a real difference to my business.
Waiting for supplies to come in, getting small orders and having to ask the customer to wait until I get a bigger order to cut on the shipping costs, it has been a real pain.

as above tradetiler

Originally Posted by Dave

32mm thick doug..?

lol, missed the 32mm bit

Thanks for all the info guys. Tradetilers a bit too far for me, I'm in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk so I'm going to have see if I can get one to hire down here.

If it does work as well as it sounds like then there is one more thing I want to try with it. The problem with the 10mm thick stuff is having to have a hammer and hardie to cut it. A number of my customers want the tesserae to make small Roman mosaic panels just for display. Now if I can find a way to slice the rods in half, then cut them into the irregular shapes, it means I can supply the irregular tesserae which can be cut with nippers (of course this will be dependant on the potential finger wastage for trying to slice the stuff like this)

Originally Posted by Dave

In all honesty.. the Dewalt D24000 is the best in the uk for bespoke work..

I knew you'd say that!

i was cutting 3mm slithers of without breaking them.