Cutting fibre cement cladding?

I less dusty way to cut is a set of electric shears or a simple hand held shears - much better than releasing all that dust into the air!

Originally Posted by mangrovejack

I less dusty way to cut is a set of electric shears or a simple hand held shears - much better than releasing all that dust into the air!

When I cut villaboard before, I did use scoring or the hand cutters. But I was thinking a hand saw might be better for longer and neater cuts. But I hear you about less dusty!

I've used the manual shears up to 6mm, and a fibre cement circ blade (just 3 or 4 teeth?) on thicker. Both go well

If you already have a circular saw I'd just recommend getting a $100 poly crystalline diamond blade. A 4 tooth makita destroyed itself after hitting a single nail, but an 8 tooth X-torque has lasted me well through tons of cement sheeting of all thicknesses. Plus you can still use them on hard wood.

Yeah the dust requires you to mask up and a fan to blow it away from you, but the edge is much cleaner. Other methods like scoring/breaking, shearing etc result in more edge delamination.

You'll also benefit from some type of track or guide to run a circular saw against for a straight cut. More so considering that you will need to set the blade depth only slightly more than the thickness of the material. It reduces the directional stability of the blade, but having too much cut depth results in the edge of the cement sheet being chipped. Makes sense when you look at the angle of attack of each tooth.

How about using a diamond grit jigsaw blade, like this one: https://www.bunnings.com.au/powerfit...blade_p0073683 ?

Or how about one of these?
https://www.tradetools.com/renegade-...blade-ri165pcd

Jigsaws are for curved cuts, if you're doing straight cuts then get the saw blade.