How to Choose the Right Tile Trowel

RON HAZELTON:
Here’s my friend Armem Tavy with another tip for tiling.
[MUSIC]

ARMEN TAVY:
Hi, I’m Armen Tavy and here’s how to choose the right trowel for the right job. 

RON HAZELTON:
Tile mortar trowels have notched edges.  When held at an angle and passed over the mortar bed, they leave uniform rows or ridges that collapse when the tile is set in place, ensuring that the mortar makes uniform contact with the underside of the tile.

ARMEN TAVY:
We’re going to hold the trowel at about 70 – 80 degrees, I’m going to draw it like this and do you hear this scraping sound?  That’s the sound we always want to hear when we’re doing the final run with the trowel.  We only want to leave behind the exact amount of mortar that the trowel was designed to leave.

RON HAZELTON:
So, what’s the correct notch size trowel to use?
ARMEN TAVY:
The minimum: quarter-by-three-eighths-by-quarter trowel to install a twelve-by-twelve tile.  When we get into the larger formats like this sixteen-by-sixteen, we’re going to switch to a quarter-by-half-inch-by-quarter-inch trowel.  In this case we have a “U” at the bottom of the these.  The round U at the bottom leaves a ridge that’s rounded so that when a tile is pressed onto the mortar, when the lines collapse because they’re rounded, they collapse more easily, there’s less drag, less resistance. 

RON HAZELTON:
For very small tiles, a three-sixteenth notch trowel like this might very well be the best choice.
ARMEN TAVY:
Two-inch-by-two-inch mosaic, which is fairly thin, as you can see, less than a quarter of an inch thick, so if we have too much mortar on the floor, the mortar is going to ooze up between the joints.  So we could get away with this trowel to install this tile.

Our last trowel here is a hand-made trowel.  We made this trowel by using an angle grinder and an old, almost throw away, diamond blade.  You can actually make your own hand trowel to get into nooks and crannies where you might not be able to get with a large trowel like this…or this.

RON HAZELTON:
When it comes to setting tile, be sure to choose the right trowel for the job.