If you have just bought our quality rubber gym mats, thanks and congratulations! Many people who want them job done right the first time, always ask how to cut our thick heavy gym mat flooring. Hence, this blog post.
Here is some quick and easy advice on how to cut rubber gym mats.
Materials You Will Need:
- razor sharp utility knife / stanley knife.
- extra blades (nothing worse than doing a large space and your blades become blunt!)
- safety gloves
- straight edge around 1m (steel rule, 2x4 wood block or similar)
- measuring tape
- cup of soapy water
Prepare Your Space:
Measure out how many mats you need to cover your area and if you are going to do a lot of cutting due to an irregular shaped space or uneven wall edges, make sure you get extra mats. We always have customers returning to get extra mats due to mis-calulations, but we can help here.
Next, you will want to cut (and lay) the rubber gym mat flooring on a level area. Ensure you have safety gloves when dealing with razor sharp blades. To avoid damage to your existing floor, use plywood or thick cardboard to place under your gym tile before cutting the rubber gym mats.
How to Cut Rubber Gym Mats:
Please note; this information is based on our thick 15mm highly compressed rubber gym tiles, if you have thinner mats or mats that may easily crumble it may not result in the way you expect.
The mat needs to be flat and position yourself on the gym mat both knees down so your weight prevents any movement while you cut the mat.
Don't forget to wear your safety gloves! Position the straight edge where you need to cut the mat, dip the knife into the soapy water as this will help the knife cut through the mat with less friction.
Using the tip of the knife, very carefully run it along the rubber and score it. Score it by moving in long straight strokes from the start point to your finish point. You will likely need to repeat this due to the thickness and strength of our rubber gym mats.
This will give you a nice clean edge, rather than scoring in short sections at a time. If you have excess offcuts, don't through them out just yet! They can come in handy as you may need them to fill smaller sections in the space and corners.
If you have rounded edges and tricky spots it can become a bit more time consuming however once you have done this a number of times you will get the hang of it.
There you have it, a safe and easy DIY from Sweat Central on how to cut rubber gym mat flooring tiles. Next time, we'll explain on how to lay rubber gym mats in a brick pattern.
