From concept to counter

Recently launched by Metex, the creators of Grindermate — Mark Thompson and Jim Wigan speak with PBM about the creation and development of the lightweight cutting jig for bricks and block paving.

As angle grinders and rotating saws are some of the most dangerous tools in construction, having a simple jig to avoid having to hold a brick in place with a foot and running a rotating blade right next to it seems like a no-brainer With 20 years of industr y experience apiece, Grindermate’s creators Mark Thompson (quantity sur veyor and director) and Jim Wigan (who ran his own building company) got the idea because of safety concerns on a big paving job back in 2016

Jim explains: “We were doing a ver y big driveway job with a labourer who wasn’t ver y skilled, so it was more to do with keeping him safe he had an accident and nearly severed his toes! We were doing thousands of cuts, so I made a prototype wooden jig for him to use, just something so I could go to work and not worr y about the labourers in the background Grindermate sort of created itself from there on!”

Jim kept using the jig with his staff for another three years, until he sat down with Mark to take it further As a commercial director of a construction company, Mark was drawn to the health & safety aspect: “For ever y company I’ve worked for, health & safety has been ever ything I saw Grindermate and thought ‘Why are people not using this, it’s so easy and effective?’

“It baffles me how people would put their foot on a brick and cut it with an angle grinder, it’s pretty dangerous and scary! It just seemed so simple, so we decided to team up ”

Product development

The initial Grindermate was a simple wooden platform which Jim built himself, with a single straight slot in the middle, but he soon needed to upgrade the jig He said: “We ran into a problem doing angled cuts as the brick wouldn’t stop moving around, so I developed it a bit more so we could cut angles on it.”

To make Grindermate into a viable product which could be manufactured costeffectively as one piece, Mark and Jim started working with a plastic manufacturing company which gave feedback on the strength of materials to use and the design evolved.

Field testing with a plastic prototype saw further design tweaks, for example to increase stability, and the next stage was to take the product to market and finding a ‘middleman’ to help sell to the large companies Mark’s industry connections led them to Metex and a meeting with its directors Daniel Bamford and Daniel Hopkins

Mark said: “ They were really keen. The business was small enough for the product to be important to them, but at the same time big enough to make it happen, so that’s why we chose them to come along on this journey with us!”

Jim and Metex then combined their skillsets to finalise Grindermate’s design Following further tweaks and trials, Daniel Bamford said: “The reaction from contractors and builders’ merchants has been very positive and we are pleased to be promoting a product that has genuine site safety benefits ”

Changing attitudes

Seasoned tradespeople are sometimes set in their ways and getting them to adopt new tools can be a challenge, but Jim isn’t daunted: “One thing they can’t avoid is the fact that it’s safer I’m having work done at my house now and my labourers have been using Grindermate