Dream a Little Dream

Back in 1995, polishing pads were in their infancy; my memories are angst-filled with those exploding resin wheels we used for-granite surface prep. Luan or hardboard templates were the norm; digital templating for the masses had yet to be born. We wouldn’t even see our first photo-templating system until 2001.

Watching a Breton CombiCut run through 26 digitally programmed slabs in an eight-hour shift today makes me laugh at the memory of crawling around a slab on the saw table and placing duct tape under the corners of the stick template. And, then marking out the corners and running the saw blade back and forth until it ran over the pen lines. (That’s even a “pre-laser” memory.)

The quality of slabs, as well as the volume of color and pattern choices we have now, was only a dream. Anyone who remembers trying to cut around a head mark in a slab will appreciate the flawless high-loss material we are now able to offer our clients. Most of the time.

Back then, even resin-filled granite was new. Caesarstone had been around for eight years, but many of the other brands of quartz products had yet to be launched.

All in all, a different industry than the one we work in today. What will the future look like for hard surface countertops?

Knowing the innovative nature of the people in the stone trade, I’m confident the industry will continue to morph into a more efficient and interesting place to work. Here are few of the ideas I’d love to see in the industry of the coming years.

TEMPLATING

Templating equipment will be more-versatile and -accurate, driven in part by the constant competition between different template-equipment companies to create the best product. I can see photo, laser, and mechanical templating all making great strides in the years ahead.

“Is that a special camera?” is one of the questions I’m always asked when photo-templating a job. I explain that the camera is normal, but the focal-length information has been collected, calibrated and entered into a software program that does the calculations.

But what if any digital camera would work? Imagine photo software sophisticated enough that a homeowner or contractor could take digital photos of an area needing a countertop, and the software could produce all needed measurements from that? How cool would it be for a homeowner to email a couple of photos to you, and get a countertop measurement?