Thomas J. Tobin — Founder, DOT Diamond Tools
Founder and Diamond Tooling Specialist, with 35+ years of diamond-tooling experience. Every technical guide on this site is written and reviewed against that experience.
Who writes the guidance on this site
DOT Diamond Tools was founded by Thomas J. Tobin, who has spent more than 35 years in the diamond tooling industry and still runs the business day to day. The company name is newer than the experience behind it, and that is worth stating plainly rather than blurring.
Over those decades he built a multi-million-dollar tooling operation from the ground up — sourcing and specification, logistics and inventory, pricing, sales, and the contractor relationships that outlast any single order. That range matters more than it might sound. Recommending the right blade is not purely a metallurgy question: it is also knowing what a crew can realistically have on site by Thursday, what a municipal specification will accept, and which failure mode a caller is describing before they have finished the sentence.
So when this site says a soft bond belongs in hard cured concrete, or that a core bit needs a different specification once rebar is in the hole, that is judgement formed by watching those choices succeed and fail on real jobs — not copy assembled from manufacturer brochures.
What 35 years in the trade actually buys you
Three habits carried over from building the business, and they shape how tooling gets specified here.
The work goes in before the order, not after the failure. The questions that decide whether a blade lasts — what the aggregate is, how the slab was cured, whether there is water at the cut, what the saw actually delivers at the arbor — get asked up front. A blade returned as faulty is nearly always a blade specified without those answers.
Nothing gets recommended that would not be recommended to family. That rules out selling a bigger machine than the job needs, and it rules out quoting a performance figure nobody can stand behind. Where the honest answer is “it depends on your aggregate”, that is the answer you will get.
The relationship is meant to outlast the order. Contractors come back because the last recommendation held up, which is a slower way to build a customer base and a considerably more durable one.
Thomas is a long-time South Florida resident — Boca Raton, Delray Beach and now Deerfield Beach, where DOT Diamond Tools is based — supplying contractors, municipalities and heavy civil crews across the United States. Away from the business he is a keen boater and outdoorsman on the waters of South Florida and the Bahamas.
Areas of specialism
The subject areas Thomas works in day to day, and the ones the guides on this site cover:
- Diamond blade selection — matching bond hardness, segment type and diameter to the material and the saw.
- Bond hardness and its counter-intuitive rule — why hard material takes a soft bond, and why the reverse glazes a blade.
- Concrete and asphalt cutting — cured, green and reinforced slab; flat-saw, walk-behind and handheld work.
- Diamond core drilling — wet and dry, bit sizes, thread standards and drilling through reinforcement.
- Surface preparation — cup wheels, tuck point and crack chaser work, coating removal and polishing.
- Respirable silica control — matching cutting method to the engineering controls OSHA Table 1 requires.
How the guidance here is produced
Four rules govern everything published on this site, and they are the reason the guides read differently from most supplier content.
No performance figures we cannot stand behind. You will not find a blade life claim in linear feet on this site, because aggregate hardness changes that number by a factor of several and any single figure would be marketing rather than information.
Safety and specification claims are cited to their source. Where a guide describes a regulatory requirement it links to the regulation itself — OSHA, FHWA or the relevant standards body — so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Contradictions get fixed, not buried. Guides are reviewed against each other. If the body of an article and its FAQ disagree about a bond recommendation, that is a defect, and it is corrected.
Every guide carries a review date. If it has not been checked recently, you can see that.
Need the right tool for a specific job?
Send the material, the saw and the cut, and we will point you to the tooling that fits.
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