Need rotary hammer for chiseling tile & glued floor laminate

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I need a rotary hammer for chiseling tile & glued floor laminate. I don't care about the rotary drilling feature as I have a small drill that is also a rotary drill hammer for drilling into concrete but it doesn't chisel.

My sister has a small section, 1'x2', of glued wood laminate on concrete, that I walked away from with a hammer & chisel, that needs to be removed. She's going to pay me for the tool, I will supply the labor, I keep the tool.

Looking on CL in my price range, I saw 4 tools that interested me. All are drill, hammer drill, and hammer chisel.

A little used cordless 18v Makita with battery for $75 but no charger which I already own.

New there's a corded 1 1/8" Hitachi & Milwaukee for $250, 1 1/8" Bosch for $200, 1" Bosch for $150. All are SDS+. I know nothing about the difference between 1" & 1 1/8" and the long term prospects of the 1" becoming obsolete.

I will always have electricity.

Suggestions please.
 
You can rent a Hilti hammer drill that you can put a chisel bit in and turn it on hammer only. If you had air available you could buy a cheappy at harbor freight
 
If it's just a small area I think those oscillating tools work pretty good for stuff like that.
 
I have an air compressor! I just use it for putting air in my tires, blow gun, and in the past spray painting.

Checking HF, I did not realize an air chisel hammer was so cheap, $13! And another $6 for 4" chisels, $8 for 7".I

I'm going this route.

Originally Posted by P10crew
You can rent a Hilti hammer drill that you can put a chisel bit in and turn it on hammer only. If you had air available you could buy a cheappy at harbor freight


Originally Posted by vwmaniaman
Air chisel with a compressor will make quick work of that.
 
rent bosch hammer demo drill from home depot
you will need to buy the spade bit I think as they stopped renting those.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
You can rent a Hilti hammer drill that you can put a chisel bit in and turn it on hammer only. If you had air available you could buy a cheappy at harbor freight


We have used Hilti at work for at least 30 years . Not cheap . May be over kill for the OP ?

I would try a heat gun first , to try to soften the adhesive .
 
Originally Posted by JLawrence08648
I have an air compressor! I just use it for putting air in my tires, blow gun, and in the past spray painting.

Checking HF, I did not realize an air chisel hammer was so cheap, $13! And another $6 for 4" chisels, $8 for 7".I

I'm going this route.


One small caveat, you do want to make sure your compressor has enough CFM. I see you list "spray painting" in your list of air activities, so you should be good. I'm just making this as a point of reference for future readers.

Air chisels don't have particularly high CFM numbers on the sticker (comparable to an impact gun actually), but it's the duty cycle that kills you. An impact gun runs for ~30 seconds at a time usually. I once air-chiseled for 90 minutes continuous. That's about the point I lost enough grip strength to hold down the trigger any longer, so I had to stop.
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Originally Posted by P10crew
You can rent a Hilti hammer drill that you can put a chisel bit in and turn it on hammer only. If you had air available you could buy a cheappy at harbor freight


Plus 1. Rent a Bosch or a Hilti.
 
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
P10crew said:
I would try a heat gun first , to try to soften the adhesive .


A heat gun? Really? I'd have to buy one at Harbor Freight. It would have to work otherwise air chisel. Seems a heat gun would take a long time to heat through the wood to soften the adhesive.

What about a torch? I have propane, mapp, acetylene, oxy-acet. I prefer the acetylene as it's in a B cylinder so it's cheap to use and easily portable. It is wood laminate so it will burn.
 
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Either way, you'll have the adhesive to clean up.

A heat gun would work, but if you have that much wood to go through, perhaps not. Maybe dump some mineral spirits along the exposed areas of where you're wanting to work.
 
Originally Posted by dlundblad
Either way, you'll have the adhesive to clean up.


I was going to put the thinset on top of the adhesive as I'm laying tile. Bad idea?
 
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Use a bigger rotary hammer to chisel up existing floor. I would rent one. Then lay a 1/4" cement board underpayment over the existing wood for a smooth surface sturdy surface for the tile. Use glue and screws to anchor the cement board securely. Install your tile on that.
 
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