Engineered Quartz : Countertop Edges

It has been a common issue miter joint skirts and countertop edges, today I’m going to hopeful give you some  really interesting  ways to perfect, other types of countertop edges. As I have said times before in my prior posts, a hidden joint is synonymous to professional perfection.

The miter joint skirt works well on some countertops, although other need a wider underneath support for a correct fitting on the cabinet, and in some cases it requires a thick solid edge of 40mm or even 50 mm, that may need a inner width of 100 mm for stability reasons.

So basically in these cases, you will find several ways of doing it, although one of the easiest and following these steps will be near perfection, with little risk of damaging raw materials while working on the counter. We always have to look at the risk we put on the countertop, after all the raw material is quite expensive, and after we have the shade variations, so we have to keep a keen eye on every detail.

Things you will need to make a perfect union, is proper adhesive, it’s normally a bi-component similar to the ones used on your day to day work, although with some special additive due to the fact of being quartz, quartz has very low porosity, for a resin to do a proper and lasting chemical link a chemical additive is  used for this effect, anyone interested in this type of information feel free to e-mail me. So we have component 1 as a polyester resin based adhesive glue pigmented to the right color (as I mentioned on my prior post, it’s iron oxide pigment, anyone with some practice can do it easily). The component 2 is a hardening agent, is basically a PBO catalyst paste used to accelerate the hardening of the glue.

Regarding the use of glue, read the instructions carefully, and remember temperature affects the hardening speed, so keep adapting your adhesive glue according to the weather conditions.

As before you’ll need some useful tools and in this case a few rubber tipped clamps and a good worktable.

Clean thoroughly the areas to be glued, make sure they’re as calibrated as possible, the glue like before the thinner the better.After it starts hardening clean the surface of the excess glue.

Some people to avoid the problems the joint area causes, just bevel both ends and use this solution commonly, everyone easily notices that they have been glued together.

My suggestion which has improved greatly the final finish and quality of the joint, is after gluing the two pieces, do an extra pass on the head polishing machine, and you will see wonders happen, it literally hides the joint fairly well, however it is important that the glue mixture is made to a perfect color combination.

Looking at other improvements that can be made in most countertops, however I know very few of us really want the bother with it and cost to add this feature is never worth it, but I believe it’s really a great add on to the final client. It’s an anti-drip cut underneath the counter. If you spill a glass of water on top of your counter the most probable thing that will happen is that it’ll just drip down your beautiful wood cabinet. With this ant-drip cut, just as we normally do on wall coverings or windowsills, the water will drip directly onto the floor. In this case, avoiding humidity on your kitchen cabinets.

When it comes to countertops either in granite or engineered stone we have so many options, and so many possibilities, I just hope to contribute with useful information.