Adventures in the Trade
New Things
It's not 1998 anymore.
Someting from the 21st century: Dekton® (All photos by Jason Nottestad)h
By Jason Nottestad
The stone countertop industry I joined in 1998 exists no more for me, both literally and figuratively. Quoting with a calculator and paper has been replaced by software that can quote and, in its free time, manage the workflow of the company. The 45 colors of granite and 15 colors of marble we sold have been replaced by an enormous number of both natural and man-made products in varying degrees of color, texture, and thickness. The stick templates, manual bridge saw, and electric hand-polisher with a bucket and a sponge have been replaced by lasers, lines on a screen, and machine polish so good it’s install-ready. That 1998 Model has not disappeared for everyone; there are still plenty of shops fabricating that same way in 2024 (although OSHA regulations on silicosis may end up reducing that number). Stone-industry social media continues to have the occasional fabricator featuring a kitchen he crafted “by hand” and puffing out his chest about it. I get it. I, too, was proud of my work when I started. But the new reality is that our CMS Speed 35 CNC can cut and polish sinks and edges with a speed, precision, and safety far superior to the best hand worker. The Flexijet I now use to measure is more-accurate to the subtle changes of a wall scribe than any manual method I ever used. For measurements and transfer of data, it can’t be beat. The hard-surfaces industry of today is more-efficient, safer, and produces a better-quality product than the industry I joined in 1998. Getting to this point, however, has not been a steady climb up the hill of progress. For me, the digital revolution of stone has been one long learning curve.
Back in 2006, I marveled at installing a 1cm quartz surface. Little did I know that things would get much thinner.
Our first real job required three shoots in a row – not the best way to instill confidence in the customer.
I credit my father with first showing me this future, and he wasn’t even in the stone industry at the time. We attended a trade show together in 2003 and saw the Etemplate measuring system being demonstrated. He had experience with photogrammetry and knew how accurate and versatile it could be. Shortly after that, I found myself in Etemplate and CAD training class and experiencing what would be an ongoing theme of progress in the industry: inadequate training for new products. I completed the class, but my limited digital training was pretty apparent as soon as my dad and I did a trial template – a 60” vanity in his house. We shot it five times before we got it to work, figuring out details with each shoot. Our first real job required three shoots in a row – not the best way to instill confidence in the customer. But the end product fit great, and after a half-dozen kitchens I could measure and draw in the digital realm on the first try. A digital template is progress, but it’s not very useful unless you’ve got the ability to get the file you’ve created to the saw. Our only method of transferring digital data into a material form at that time was using a vinyl plotter – a step back down the hill of progress on some days. The plotting machine was temperamental and not always the most-accurate way to transfer data. We fought with the machine on how to load the vinyl, what speed to run it at, and how much pressure the cutting tool should be under. We got it to ‘mostly work,’ but I didn’t miss it the day we transferred all our work to a fully digital shop. Being able to transfer digital files was efficient, but it didn’t solve all the problems. The pieces began to fit perfectly, but the CNC tooling in the early days wasn’t incredibly accurate. Our fabricator had his polishers finish every piece by hand – yet another step backwards on the hill of progress. We got countertops that were unevenly polished, gouged at the seams, and scuffed by polish pads on the finished surface. We worked through it. He remade pieces and trained his polishers enough to move beyond those mistakes. He was busy and excited to tell us about a new automated production line he was putting in that should help to move beyond some of the production issues he was having.
Adapting to the first versions of digital templating took a lot of practice ... and patience.
An explanation is met with an automated, “It’s August, we’re on vacation for a month” reply.
That's me on the right in 2005, winging it without all the modern installation tools of today.
The line was installed and, when the technicians turned on the machines, they found the software hadn’t been translated into English. It took weeks for the translations to be completed and months for all of the programming glitches to be worked out. On multiple occasions, a fingerbit cutting out a sink would simply continue on in a straight line instead of recognizing the curved back edge of the sink … ruining a piece, pods, and the production schedule in one fell swoop. The road to progress is littered with broken tops. Like many other companies in the early days of CNC production, they persevered and became a very successful digital shop. Because the stone industry is global, software issues can span the continents. One company I worked for had software updates during the night-time hours, as the programmers were all in Europe. More than once we’d arrive the next day and power up our enormous slab storage and retrieval system … only to have it crash into a slab that had been improperly moved and stored by the system during the night. The noise of shattered quartz cascading down two stories is not the best way to start your day, especially after your email asking for an explanation is met with an automated, “It’s August, we’re on vacation for a month” reply. Even today, operating systems running equipment remain as integrated as Indra’s Net and vulnerable to any change. A small tweak in one part of the software can cause a core bit to crash into the surface of a stone with a vengeance.
For the designer, the wealth of available surfacing options is like being a kid in a candy shop. For the fabricator, the complications are complex.
Despite these challenges, the digital production model is thriving. Improvements continue to be made in efficiency and quality, with CNC tooling and the ability to measure and dress it leading the way. For the installer, the 1998 Model has also changed beyond recognition. The raw, saw-cut seam has been replaced by a sharp CNCed edge or an edge with the Seam Phantom. A 1998 seam considered acceptable then would probably be mercilessly critiqued on social media today. The introduction of color matched seam adhesive greatly improved the quality of seams, but the first couple generations of these products were problematic. With your seam prepped and ready to go you’d find the seam adhesive had already cured in the tube and you were tumbled back to the standby: polyester in the can and a color-mix kit. Worse yet, you’d apply the adhesive to the seam and wait for it to set up. And wait. And wait. In vain. You’d discover the tube where the activator should have been was empty. Now you’re back to polyester in the can and an enormous mess to clean up as well. The seam-setting tools of today have also propelled the quality forward. In 1998, the slightest bow in a material was something difficult to remove. Today, a well-positioned set of Gorilla Grips, in combination with a strong seam adhesive, can remove and stabilize most seam warps and bows. If that doesn’t take care of the problem, there are now several top-polish kits to help an installer polish down a warped seam to flat and blend it with the polish of the surrounding material in both quartz and natural stone. The modern installer also has a range of lifting and bracing tools that the installer from the 1998 model could only dream of. No Lift carts, advanced lifting handles, sink savers, and wheeled carts are a few of the advances that I would have benefitted from back in the late Nineties. To be fair though, the modern installer has to deal with enormous islands that once would have been unimaginable. And with quartz slabs now pushing about 140” x 80”, the mega island is not getting any easier. For all of the categories that make the work of the modern fabricator easier, the major one has actually complicated our lives: the material. If something can be both a blessing and a curse, it has to be the availability of countertop options. For the designer, the wealth of available surfacing options is like being a kid in a candy shop. For the fabricator, the complications that arise from seemingly endless choices are complex.
Materials like Dekton® make a miter edge like this a darling with designers. For installers, not so much.
"Change is inevitable. Change is constant."
First and foremost is learning how to work with each new material that comes along. I was just beginning my career when quartz was introduced, and I remember the pushback from the fabricator community. Suddenly they were expected to work with a product that had to be polished wet or the resins inside would burn – a change for many who cut and polished granite with a wet/dry mix. No one was sure exactly how to fix quartz if it chipped. Manufacturers were still learning how to remove tension within the cooked slabs. Enough fabricators experienced slabs that cracked or exploded on saw tables and waterjets that the word got out. If that sounds a lot like the reaction the fabricator community had to the introduction of sintered materials, that’s because it is. Twenty years on from our introduction to quartz, we now need to learn how to play with porcelain and equivalents, with some of the same results. And not only do we have a new material, we’ve got to miter fold and present the customer with an edge profile that is, let’s be honest, a little sharper than our historic comfort level. As large-scale porcelain slabs grow thinner and thinner, the 3cm-countertop-only fabricator is now being challenged to cut, transport, and install wall cladding as thin as 6mm, -- with 4mm product on the way. With material suppliers assuring the fabricator community that this is the material of the future, it’s difficult to avoid embracing another learning curve, even for old dogs of the pack like me. I’d never get nostalgic about the weight of a piece of 3cm, but the product familiarity is there. Back then, 1998 me, hand-polishing a 3cm piece of Ubatuba in a manual shop, couldn’t have imagined I’d be laser-measuring, CNC-sawing, and installing a 12mm porcelain shower panel. But, as Benjamin Disraeli said more than 150 years ago: “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”
In 1998, anything below 2cm was oddball. Now, the thin barrier is 6mm ... with 4mm on the way.