Cutting Curved Concrete Pavers

Laying a Curved Line

• 1

  Lay out the shape of the drive or walkway using mason's twine and small stakes. Pound the stakes into the ground along the perimeter of the walkway, and use the string to create the outline of the walkway. Place the stakes closer together when outlining a curve, and farther apart for straight lines.

• 2

  Prepare the ground, and lay the pavers onto the compressed, smoothed earth. Set the pavers into the straight areas of the perimeter first, and then place the pavers along the curved sections.

• 3

  Use a marking pen to mark the pavers that are in the curved areas. The curved lines are created by cutting the square pavers into wedges. By cutting an angled surface on the side of each paver, the pavers slowly form a curved line as they lie against one another. This same architectural trick was used to lay brick into rounded archways. The individual bricks are slightly angled, and thus create line segments that form a curve.

• 4

  Cut each brick using the ceramic tile saw, and try to distribute the entire curve evenly across all the bricks in the curved profile line. In other words, by cutting a little wedge from the side of each paver, the curved line will appear smooth and continuous. If you cut large wedges from some pavers and little wedges from others, the curve will appear chunky and uneven.

• 5

  Lay the bricks next to each other, and create the entire curved profile. The seams between the pavers are filled with sand when the walkway is finished.

Cutting a Curved Paver

• 6

  Mark a sharp curve on an individual paver with a marker when a single brick must be curved to follow a small radius curve. In rare cases, an individual paver must be cut into a rounded profile to fit against a rounded fixture, such as the base of a structural pillar.

• 7

  Stand the paver up on its edge in the cutting tray of the ceramic tile saw, so that the curved line is facing you. Cut downward through the paver, from the edge of the brick to the marked line. Cut the areas that you want to remove into 1/2-inch wide "fingers." When you are done, the cut end of the brick looks like a large tooth comb

• 8

  Tap the brick fingers with a hammer, and break them off the paver. Use a hammer and a brick chisel to clean off all small bits of cement which remain, and clean up the curve.

• 9

  Lay the curved brick into place, and check the fit. You can use the tile saw as a rough sander to smooth out the curve and make the brick paver fit. Stand the brick on edge, pull the blade down toward the brick and carefully slide the brick under the abrasive blade to clean up and grind the curve to the exact profile.