How to drill a tile under a socket box with a crown or a thin drill
When laying tiles, the main difficulty is not cutting, but drilling holes, especially for socket boxes. There are special diamond-coated crowns for this purpose. But their presence does not guarantee that the hole will be obtained in exactly the right place, since they tend to slide to the side when drilling begins. In this regard, we will consider how to use a crown to drill exactly according to the markings, and how you can do without it with a regular drill.
1. Drilling with a diamond core bit
If you use a hole saw with a center drill, it goes deeper and prevents slipping. When working without it, you need to draw the outline of the hole on the tile by circling the crown. The easiest way to do this is by gluing masking tape, since a pencil or regular felt-tip pen does not write on the glaze.
Then we start the rotation of the crown and place it at an angle to the edge of the hole. Its corner will make a notch that will prevent slipping.
Then the tool is smoothly leveled.
You need to drill through the icing to create the outline of a hole. Then water is poured into it. It will cool the crown, which will extend its life. In addition, in this case there will be no dust. Water is added when a crown with a centering drill is used.
2. Drilling with a thin drill on tiles
If you only need to drill a couple of holes, then buying a crown just for them is not practical. In this case, you can get by with an inexpensive thin tile drill. We also draw the outline of the hole by gluing masking tape.
Then we make perforations in a circle with a thin drill, trying to retreat between them as little as possible. At the same time, constantly dip the drill in water so that it does not overheat.
Then we drill the walls between the holes at an angle. After this, the tile inside the circle will fall off. Protruding notches can be broken off with pliers.
Sand the torn edge of the hole. To do this, we wrap sandpaper around the pipe and smooth the contour with an improvised file.
As a result, we get a high-quality even hole for mounting the socket box.