When we stumbled across D-Cut’s booth at The Remodeling Show in Nashville in late October, we were impressed to see a small stack of freshly cut fiber-cement siding, with precise edges and absolutely zero lingering dust particles. They were set next to a freestanding machine that looked not unlike a sheet-metal brake, albeit a heavily modified one. It turned out to be D-Cut’s new SC-600 fiber-cement cutter, which is certainly different from a break but uses similar physics.
Typically, you can cut fiber-cement siding and trim one of two ways: you can run through it with a power saw, or you can chomp through it with power shears. Even with a specialty blade and a dust-collection attachment, a power saw cutting through concrete is going to kick up dust. And while shears are largely dustless, their cuts are slow and inaccurate.
“The SC-600 is a balance of extreme precision and zero dust,” says the tool’s creator and owner of D-Cut, Charlie Zhang. “It’s also quick and easy to use.”
Zhang’s cutter isn’t the only concrete cutter on the market, but it’s the only one that has a dual-blade system and needs just a single person to make angled cuts—innovations that reduce maintenance and improve ease of use.
As Zhang demonstrated the tool, he explained that its swiveling cutting head is what allows a single user to make angled cuts. The semicircular base on which the head rests has preset roof-pitch marks from 4/12 to 18/12, and also degrees from zero to 70, if specialty cuts are needed. With basic cutters, which have a static head, to make a pitched cut, you need to measure and mark the angle on the siding or trim you’re cutting and then have another person hold it steady at that angle while you make the cut. SC-600’s design consolidates the process to: set your pitch, place your board, make your cut (no dust, totally precise).