ICS Diamond Chainsaw Review

Roger Bisby revisits the ICS diamond chainsaw and discovers a new twist.

The ICS diamond chainsaw cuts through both skins of a cavity wall which, as we all know, is something you can’t achieve with a cut-off saw or angle grinder.

Table of Contents

A Different Cut

All too often you can get partway through but you then have that awkward bit where you have to go inside and complete the cut.

Cutting the opening entirely from outside has obvious advantages in keeping the dust and debris out of the building but diamond chains cost more than diamond blades so many builders are reluctant to make the investment in the technology.

EC Hopkins, the UK master distributor for ICS products and the ICS Diamond chainsaw, has come up with a solution in a diamond blade that allows you to make a pre-cut through the outer skin with a petrol cut off saw and then use the diamond chainsaw to complete the cut. If like me you are thinking that this is reinventing the wheel you are both right and wrong.

ICS Diamond Chainsaw Blades

Diamond blades have been around for years but the ones we all use are way too thin to open a cut wide enough for the chain to follow up and too narrow a cut will wear the sides of the chain rather than the diamond tips.

The blade sold by Hopkins is 6mm wide, more like those used for raking out pointing. This gives a cut wide enough to allow the diamond chain to do its work on the second half of the wall. If this is aircrete block you will be through it in seconds.

In fact, I started thinking that you could get through it with block saw but it will take you some time and looking at the price of block saws it might actually end up costing more per cut.

Water Lubrication

The chain requires water to lubricate it and wash the debris out of the cut. We prepared for a flood but the total amount of water caught in our polythene was about two wet and dry vacuum cleaners worth, hardly enough to worry about.

I should also mention that the cavity was filled with Rockwool, which I thought might clog the chain but it must have been mashed up so fine that it didn’t even show in the waste water.

The only other potentially messy bit was inside the building. If you cut through the wall you will lay a thin line of dirty water down on the floor.

The best way to avoid this is to set the depth of the cut so it goes through the masonry but leaves the plaster intact. This is easy enough to do but you could hang a sheet of polythene up inside if you are worried.

Final Cut

Once the cut is complete you can then break the plaster line with a bolster. It is surgery of the least invasive type and the clean-cut means that you aren’t in danger of knocking the building about.

The only other point I should mention is that, unlike wood cutting chains, the diamond chain needs to be slack so the debris can drop out with the water rather than running around the drive cog and bar. When the job is done you need to dry the chain with a rag and spray it with WD40 or a similar silicone spray.