Engineered Quartz : Counter top miter joint edge

How to miter join two pieces of engineered quartz or granite.

If you are a do it yourself person or even a professional, I think this post will help you on your current projects either a do it yourself countertop edge made of granite or engineered quartz.

I’ve seen several techniques done, and many with really great results. Hiding the joint in a front skirt of a engineered quartz countertop is one of the major problems for all fabricators. I guess some skirts are easier to hide than others; however in this post we will actually focus on  the miter cut technique, but there are a few others which may also bring you very positive results. The main objective is to to hide the joint area making the end user believe that it’s a unified piece of engineered quartz or granite.

Before we go ahead with details, it’s important that you choose the appropriate gluing adhesive for the material you plan to glue. Adhesive for marble use is different than the one for engineered quartz, the porosity is different and may pose difficulties to the gluing chemical process. Just as an example doing a basin out of engineered stone can be a great disaster if you do not use the appropriate technique with the gluing process, the continuous humid, dry, heat, cold processes will gradually destroy the linkage between the several engineered stone pieces.

As I already mention we will be dealing directly with miter type joints, in my opinion one that requires perfect cutting accuracy but in the end will give you a fabulous result. I will try to the best of my knowledge explain the correct way to actually do a perfect job. 

What is a miter type joint?

A miter joint is made up with a perfect 90º angle, by joining two separate pieces of engineered stone (or any other product for the general matter) with a 45º angle on each one. Gluing them together we will end up a perfect 90º angle piece of stone.

Gluing miter type joints

A miter type of joint are one of the easiest to actually hide the joint area. It’s main characteristic is to give your worktop a side view of a great thickness, since standard thicknesses for quartz slabs are between 1,2 and 3 cm, some like a 4cm view. However there are some important things you should be careful while preparing the pieces to cut and glue:

• The longer the piece the more difficult it is to get a perfect job done, use auxiliary tools to help you with this tough job, scrapples and hooks will be needed to hold the pieces in place during the gluing process and a good worktable will also be essential.

• Perfect cutting, the 45º cut on both ends will have to be perfect as they’ll have to be joined together to make a perfect 90º angle.

• The adhesive glue, should not be too thick as it’s thickness will also increase the joint area and therefore make it difficult to hide, so make a relatively liquid paste for this type of gluing.

• Make sure you adapt the color of your paste to the color of the stone, use iron oxide pigments for the job, make certain the color is well balanced . Some manufacturers will sell you putty or professional glue already mixed to the right color, with some experience in mixing colors you may easily dominate this and be independent. (in my example it's yellow)

Now the trick that will definitely hide the joint is the beveling of the edge, beveling the joint corner will disguise everything and make your job perfect. So a do it yourself granite or engineered quartz countertop may end up looking very professional, all you need is to follow some simple steps and precision cutting to ensure a really great countertop edge.