Preventing cracked tiles in the doorway

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27 Mar 2011
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Buckinghamshire
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United Kingdom
I have good quality porcelain tiles installed on a concrete sub-floor on the ground floor. One thing I noticed is that many of the tiles that were installed in the doorway end up cracking. I spoke to the tile shop and they said that if you cut a right angle slot out of a tile then the sharp right angle cut creates a weak point and causes the tile to crack. He suggested, drilling a hole at the corner and then making the two cuts from either side to meet at the drilled hole. This avoids the weak spot with the two sharp cuts meeting at the corner and then avoids the tile cracking.

A crude image to depict this:
tile cutting.png


Left tile is the way to avoid with two sharp edges meeting at a harsh 90 degree angle.

Right tile is showing blue where a small drilled hole sould be done (hole isn't that big, that's obviously just to show in the image for illustration). Then the two straight cut edges are done to meet at the hole.

These typical corner pieces are cut out where a tile is being installed at doorways but also in other locations as well.

This is the first time I've heard this and I can't find any supporting advice on youtube and the internet. Is this true? Any credible information to support this technique?

I've spoken to a few trades about this and many of them have not heard about this. One trade said he had and he swears by it and confirms that this vastly avoids cracked tiles that need to be cut like this.
 
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It works to stop vibration cracks in metal, so it may well work.
 

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