Selecting the “Perfect” Slab – Part II

Let’s assume that the perfect slab won’t be out there whenever you happen to be looking for it. (And, believe me, Murphy’s Law will always apply to this situation.)
Given this reality, my first course of action is to plan for the next best thing – finding a slab that has some imperfections, but not so off-the-charts as to tempt the customer to reject the material. So, here are some techniques that have been very helpful in the CYA (Cover Your Assets) department.
First and foremost: if you have customers that even hint they want to be in on the selection process – let them.
I know that some customers really try our patience, but you’ll be better off letting your customer have the last say in what slab is going to go in their house. (Wouldn’t you want to have a voice in the matter in your house?) It’s always better to remind the customer that this was the stone they selected when there is a question about how it looks in the final installation.
There are some exceptions however, when it comes to selecting slabs – Absolute Black, Indian Premium Black (and any other monolithic stone with virtually NO movement or marginal shade variation within the slab) are colors that don’t have a huge amount of variation within the slab. However, I feel that even the smallest amount of variation should be made evident to the customer, and they should have the last say on the slab.
If you include your customer in the selection and approval process, the education and re-enforcement process starts immediately. Here’s what I always have to remind myself: Your customer doesn’t know anywhere near as much about the natural-stone business as you do.
Don’t presume that they understand pitting, vein-cut versus cross-cut, benches, blocks or slabs. All your customer knows is that they want slab countertops because they read about them in a magazine, saw them on TV, or they are trying to keep up with the folks down the block. Whatever the reason, they want slab counters, and it’s our obligation to make sure that they know what they’re getting into before they get the final product.
So what do you tell them? I’ve worked on the fundamentals – pitting; fissures; color variation from slab to slab; color variation within the slab; and refraction and its role in multi-directional applications utilizing refractive crystal structures in various refractory stones.
Pitting: Just about every stone species has some degree of pitting. I like to use the old standby of Baltic Brown as an example – especially if that’s the stone that they are contemplating using in their project.
Have your customer look across the face of the slab as it sits on an A-frame or in the pole rack in the yard. Better yet, if you have a horizontal example of the stone that they can view, it helps them visualize the actual degree of pitting and the way that they will see the pitting when the stone is reflecting light.
Fissures: Many natural stones have fissures in them. I recall an in-depth discussion with another stone professional on the subject, and he emphatically made his case that true granites would not have fissures – only gneisses and schists would.
I’m not a geologist, and he made a pretty good argument – so I’ll just say that if a stone has a fissure in it, it’s not a defective stone. Customers tend to panic if they spot a fissure (otherwise known to them as a “crack”); unless we educate them prior to them viewing slabs, we will be in defensive mode when they spot their first fissure.
So how do I explain fissure to a new customer? God made the stone; all we fabricators do is try to embellish it a bit. The fissure was there when the stone was formed.
A fissure is a natural junction or line of separation within a single intact mass of stone. Fissures are typically made when two separate flows of liquid hot magma merge and create a single, unified molten mass.
Fissures are not a defect. A fissure is there when the stone formed and cooled and sat for eons, waiting for a quarrier to cut into a block. The fissure was still there when the factory cut the block into a slab, and it will always be there.
Can the fissure open up after the countertops are installed? Depending on the amount of movement in the house, it’s possible, but not probable – unless you live in a very flexible part of the country (You folks living over the San Andreas Fault – I’m looking in your general direction.)
If the fissure opens up while we’re fabricating your job, we’ll join the two pieces back together with epoxy or polyester and resurface the piece. We’ll also reinforce the underside of the stone with embedded steel rods to make the overall piece even stronger that it was when it was formed.
But, we won’t throw the broken piece away and start over. If you make sure that your customer knows where you stand on fissures, there won’t be a problem later on in the job.
Pitting and fissures are probably the two biggest complaints that Fabricators get from their customers, unless they educate them on these natural qualities.
Color Variation: If you want absolutely consistent color, buy a laminate or solid surface. Natural stone is going to have variations from slab to slab and within the slab. That’s why they call it natural.
I make sure that customers view and approve the whole slab, and not just a 4”-square generic sample of the prospective stone species. I also advise customers to take a sample home and look at it in different degrees of lighting conditions – natural daylight, evening indoor lighting, candlelight or whatever. If customers know what’s coming, they won’t be shocked when it gets to their house.
Refraction: This became a concern over the last decade or so. Refractive stones weren’t as common as they are now, due to the many advances in technology that have helped make natural stone more accessible and affordable.
Refraction is the ability of an object to capture light and reflect it back in any direction. The most classic example of refraction is a single beam of light penetrating a triangular crystal prism, with the light beam diffused into the various shades of color. (I always recommend, for a visual example, that people refer to the classic album cover for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon.)
In any event, I’m sure that you’ve seen examples of refraction in many crystal formations of different slabs while fabricating. Where you need to reinforce your customer’s understanding of refraction, and how it can change, is when you place pieces together at different angles.
This actually happened on a job I evaluated. A customer had a kitchen fabricated out of Labrador Antique Granite, and had various pieces set at 45° angles to one another. When the job was finished, the high refractive quality of the stone separated the light in many different directions. The pieces looked like different colors, even though the entire job was cut from consecutively numbered slabs. Once the customer saw that veins lined up from one piece to another, he was satisfied that this was a natural quality of the stone.
You can do this very easily for your own customers by taking two separate pieces of the same stone from the same slab. I like to use either Blue Pearl or Emerald Pearl, and place them at a 45° or 90° angle to each other. Let your customer see that, even though these are two pieces from the same slab, the light reflects differently as positions are changed.
The bottom line here is that the more you can inform your customers about the particular stones they’re considering on a project, the more headaches you’ll spare yourself and your customers.
Until next month … best regards and Happy Fabricating!
Kevin M. Padden operates KM Padden Consulting in Phoenix.

This article first appeared in the February 2005 print edition of Stone Business. ©2005 Western Business Media Inc.