Hand-y Countertop Fabrication
With GPS and handheld navigation devices (I’ve even got navigation on my phone!), the paper map is a thing of the past. If you want to use paper maps effectively, you have to have a bunch of them to cover different areas and the details of those areas. You have to pull off the road to read one, thus wasting time. They don’t update themselves when new roads are added or changed – you have to buy new ones.
And, to top it all off, paper maps never fold back up properly. They are like a paper Rubik’s cube. Why would anyone stick with this old school technology when you could mount a little turn-by-turn device on your dash and be guided by the heavens?
Why? Because sometimes the heavens fail us when we’re counting on them. Get a little too far away from a tower, or blocked from a satellite signal, and you can get turned around in a hurry. And, because you threw away the paper maps, you and your non-communicating electronic device are just plain lost.
In the race toward more-advanced, computer-controlled stone-working machinery, basic handwork skills are sometimes treated like the paper map. We overlook them until we have a spindle go bad, or a software malfunction that can only be corrected by an overseas tech, or a designer that insists on a piece of stone that can’t be done on a machine. A shop that maintains properly trained and experienced handworkers will have no problems overcoming the challenges and may even find areas where a good hand polisher is better than a machine.
Stoneworkers entering the trade when I did have a unique perspective on this, as the stone technology we now all take for granted was, in many cases, at Version 1.0. The first countertop fab shop I worked in had my boss and myself working a Park Industries Cougar, and a bunch of Milwaukee Electric hand tools. Handworking skills weren’t a luxury – they were the only thing we had.
Our purchase of a Ghines sector stone router was an absolute cause for celebration, as it meant we no longer had to bullnose by hand, and we could offer a respectable ogee edge. Getting a Thibaut T108L installed meant we didn’t have to cut every sink by hand. While this technology increased our output, every guy we hired still started out polishing backsplash by hand until he learned how to effectively and efficiently work with stone tools.
I’m not in a panic that these skills are becoming a lost art, as the majority of shops are still well-equipped to handle whatever polishing comes their way. However, with CAD guys replacing handworkers on a daily basis, the writing is clearly on the wall. The basic skills are always in danger of being forgotten or watered down if they are overlooked in favor of ever-more-complicated machinery.
What skills are essential for your shop to maintain while you move ahead into the digitized age? Handworkers are going to need four basic skill sets, no matter how good the computers get.
THE EDGE OF FLAT
The first, and still the most-important, skill is the ability to polish a flat edge. This skill is not only important for countertop edges, but is also crucial for the guys who are polishing the ends of backsplashes, and doing finish work on sinks that can’t be polished by a CNC.
The most-difficult part about working with polishing pads is learning how to keep them flat against the surface you’re polishing. Someone new will usually tip the pad toward the top or the bottom of the stone, resulting in one half of the countertop edge polished well, and the other half dull or remaining with scratches.
The other difficulty with polishing a flat edge is learning to keep the tool moving at all times to avoid putting divots into the face of the stone. This becomes even more important as belt-driven straight-line polishers enter shops in big numbers. If one piece of your kitchen has a glassy, flat edge from the polisher and another has a bunch of divots from a rookie handworker, Mrs. Jones might just notice and complain about the inconsistency.
Sound flat-edge-polishing technique is also important when one of your workers is polishing the ends of backsplash pieces. If a guy spends too much time and overpolishes a backsplash end, the guy in the field has to deal with a piece that has a nice convex end to it. Polishing too long on the top and bottom, and not enough in the middle, will give you this effect.
Combine this with a grinder that was tipped toward the front or back of the piece, and you’ll never be able to line it up with the top of your edge detail. For a high-production place, this may be a detail hardly worthy of mention. But if you run into a picky homeowner or builder, a poorly polished backsplash end will be spotted quickly and can become an issue.
Personally, botched backsplash ends are a pet peeve. Get burned by a bad one on a cut-to-length piece, and you’ll soon be like me and order most of your backsplash long. That way, I’ve got the length to cut off a really bad end and polish it myself.
THE 90° RULE
The second skill is the ability to cut and clean out a 90° inside corner. With the era of the minimum inside radius for CNC tooling, many fabricators would just as soon see the 90° corner (also affectionately and unaffectionately known as the Inside Ninety) go away for good. Unfortunately, some homeowners and designers don’t feel a 3” inside radius fits with the look they want.
If you’ve ever seen a well-designed, hyperlinear Arts and Crafts house, the idea of throwing a radius into the picture is somewhat of a joke. A corner seam would be a solution, but many people are opposed if the return distance is not large.
Sink manufacturers have also kept the 90° inside corner a relevant skill set. Several have introduced lines that are perfect squares or rectangles. A rather unforgiving 3/16” inside radius is the most-generous one I’ve seen on a square bowl.
Cutting and polishing a 90° corner requires both skills with a saw or grinder blade, as well as proper flat-polishing technique. For shops that cut inside corners with a saw or CNC, there will always be stone left on the inside corner that needs to be cleaned out by hand. This is where most trouble with inside corners is created.
A blade that is tipped during the cutting process can create an edge that is out of plumb and needs to be feathered out to look halfway decent. An overenthusiastic guy, or a slip of the tool, can create a gouge in one part of the corner that will also need to be feathered out. This feathering process can create pieces that look downright goofy, and are easily spotted by homeowners or builders.
While some gouges are unavoidable due to stone that chips or blades that catch as you’re cutting, most are due to impatience. A worker cleaning out a corner needs to constantly check progress with a straight edge. It’s best to leave a thin layer of stone (and I mean thin!) to take off with the polishing pads as well – as long as you start the polishing process with a 50 pad. That way, once the grinder marks are polished out, you’re normally very close to flat along the countertop edge all the way into the corner.
Getting the inside of a 90° corner polished is tricky and again requires patience, especially with the lower pads. If you’re too aggressive approaching the inside point, the edge of your pad can touch the opposite edge and create a gouge that will need to be feathered out. It’s best to move cautiously toward the very inside corner until you’re past the 400 grit pad.
Another issue with inside corners is making sure the polishing pad is perfectly centered on the backer pad. If it’s not, the protruding edge of the pad can hit against the opposing stone face; this can potentially damage the stone, as well as fraying the edge of the pad and making it dangerous to use for polishing edge details.