So Take My Job ….

To establish a good working relationship with a fabricator, the first thing you’ll need to do is to learn their system. Each shop has its own way of doing things; the quicker you figure this out, the better you’ll be able to blend in with their workflow and become a helpful part of their operation
First of all, you need to be able to understand the communication flow, and who’s in charge of it. How is a shop going to get you the information you’ll need in order to template and install a job? Do they have paper forms that contain addresses, layouts, stone types, sinks, faucets, etc., or can they e-mail you all the pertinent information? You’ll want to know who to contact with questions, especially when you’re on the jobsite. Sometimes, you’ll need to get answers in order to finish your template.
If the job is granite, for example, and the client has questions about seam placement, you may need to talk to the shop about slab size and graining before you can give an answer. Moving a seam can affect a bid as well, so it’s important to talk to the fabricator before you give definitive answers on changes that may affect the price.
Sometimes the drawing that was sent to the fabricator to get a bid isn’t the cabinet layout you find when you get to the job. If this is the case, you’ll once again have to talk to the fabricator and let them know about the changes, so they can get new numbers to the client if the price needs to be adjusted.
The same is true if the client decides to add another countertop surface to the project. You’re not going to template something that’s not sold, so a phone call is necessary.
Once you’ve completed the templating process, you’ll then have to figure out how to submit that information properly. We’ve worked with a dozen different shops and each one had a slightly different way to mark templates or CAD drawings so their machines and fabricators could understand and process the information. This is vitally important, as a misinterpreted drawing can mean a junked piece.
Because of this, some of the large automated shops have very strict guidelines on submission drawings. If you don’t have every measurement marked according to their specifications, they’ll reject the drawing and send it back to you. This can be a real pain at first, especially when a drawing is sent back to you for revision two or three times and the email they send is in red letters!
Once you’ve completed a few jobs and understand the process, it gets easier and you grow to appreciate it. With everything labeled and dimensioned, the gray area that the blame game lives in is gone.
Some shops have never subcontracted out template and install, so they won’t have a written instruction manual on how to label templates and CAD drawings. If this is the case, ask them to give you some of the old templates and drawings they produced in-house; from those, you can compile your own database of information on marking the edge details, raw edges, sink center lines, etc.
It’s also vital to understand the machining limits of the shop – and, in particular, how they fabricate seams, returns, and sink and stove cutouts. Don’t assume every shop does things the way yours does.
For example, the shop you are subcontracting for may fabricate a European seam at a 45° angle instead of a radius. Or, they may vary their seams, depending on the edge detail involved.
If you tell the client she’ll have a curved inside radius at her corner seam and she ends up with a 90° corner, she may be disappointed. If she complains, you’re off to a bad start with that fabricator.
Each shop deals with polished returns differently, and it’s important to understand how the shop you’re working with treats them. Are they able to stop every edge detail at a spot you tell them, or are you going to have to protect yourself on returns and do some of them yourself?
Of all the details that are present in my countertop drawings, issues with returns are the most-common. Sometimes they are polished too far back; sometimes, not at all. By knowing how returns are done and how accurate they are, you can save yourself a lot of grief and probably some money.
Each shop also treats sink-cutout templates differently. Some shops I work with cut exactly what the sink maker sent them as a paper or cardboard cut-out, or posted as a DXF file on line. Others will shrink all templates that have reveals to the top of the sink roll or bevel. Still others will shrink their templates to be flush with the inside wall of the sink.
It’s very important that you know what the sink cutout style is going to be when you go out to make the template. When the homeowner has an opinion on this, it’s normally because they saw a cutout they didn’t like. If you’re able to tell them exactly what their cutout will look like, you’ll know if the fabricator will have to do something different in order to have a happy client.
Odd-shaped tops can test machining limits. Some CNC machines cannot read splines, so it’s only making more work for the fabricator if you send a drawing through that contains them. Knowing ahead of time can save you from frustrating the CAD guy at the shop.
One time, I sent one drawing through with a spline that had to be divided into 36 three-point arcs for use on the equipment. The CAD guy in that case – Joe Schneider from KG Stevens in New Berlin, Wis. – could have sent the drawing right back and had me fix it, but instead he was able to make it within 1/64″ of my original line and sent it back to me for approval. I would have been crazy to reject it; that was above and beyond the call, and I wouldn’t expect this from many fabricators.
It’s also important that everyone involved in the process understands your drawings. It’s a fact that many of the handworkers in the shops we work with don’t read English very well. The most-common problem I’ve run into is having details overlooked because they were in a language the guys didn’t understand.
Before submitting drawings, make sure you know if the workers at the end of the machine line can read them, and if there’s anything you can do to prevent errors if they can’t. We’ve adjusted some of our templates to work with the language barrier in one shop, but only after repeated complaints and their admission that a problem existed.
After problems with a different shop I offered to translate my drawings into Spanish, but the owner refused. We don’t work with them much anymore.
Because mistakes do happen it’s very important to protect yourself when you make your measurements and submit them for fabrication, especially when you are starting out. When we began MTS, we made a template for every piece to check the size and then made a duplicate template that we gave the fabricator. This may sound paranoid, but understand that I once worked in a shop where the guys would smash countertop pieces they cut wrong in order to hide evidence of their mistakes.
In that kind of environment, what would stop a guy from cutting a Mylar® template to match his mistake? With the original template still in my possession, it’s impossible for someone to get away with this.
Inevitably, some mistakes will slip though and you’ll need to deal with them in the field. What skills will you need? Find out next month.
Jason Nottestad, a 13-year stone-industry veteran, is co-owner of Wisconsin-based Midwest Template Services.