Does anyone out there have any (good) experience with precision cutting Silestone to half-recess vessel sinks in an existing countertop? I am considering four methods:
1. hacking away at the Silestone with a grinder-mounted diamond blade myself
2. Hiring somebody to hack away at the silestone (any great stone carver recommendations in Southern California would be appreciated)
3. taking the whole darned thing to a fabricator (any advice on high-quality fabricators?)
4. Using explosives to eliminate the entire headache
Replies
If it's possible to safely remove it and take it to a fabricator, that's hands-down the best way to go. Check the silestone web site to see who fabs in your area.
Thanks. Good advice.
Contact The International Solid Surface Fabricators Association at http://www.issfa.net
or try http://www.solidsurfacegeeks.com
I was under the impression that solid surface products are all polymer based. What I'm looking at is, I think, a quartz-based concrete. Thank you for the good resources in any event.
I've got a friend, Lenny Elbon, who holds several solid surface patents, is an expert witness, and before he became a consultant for the Chinese, helped develop the definition for solid surface in his capacity at the International Solid Surface Fabricators Association.
Lenny says quartz is solid surface and that's good enough for me.
Yea, Lenny may be technically right, but if you told a builder creating a bid for a new home here in Texas to provide an allowance for a "Solid Surface" countertop in your Kitchen and nothing else was mentioned......when the client finally selected Silestone, the allowance would come up short, creating problems with builder / client relations.
Solid Surface has become synanamous (no spellcheck) with Corian or like products. It is the common use of the term here in Texas.
When I say Bucaneer, you probably think of a pirate. Bucaneer is synanamous with Pirate, but the word actually means "one who cooks over an open flame". Silestone may be solid surface, but not as it commonly understood in the trades here in Texas.
Tampa Bay Bar-b-quers? Sometimes you can be so right you are wrong.
I stand, or stoop corrected. Leny's solid surface credentials seem, well, quite solid.
ditto...davidmeland...great advise
Yes, Silestone is a solid surface material as the composition of the material is through body. I agree that the best way is to transport the material to a stone or quartz fabricator and have them make the modification. Silestone, like all of the quartz counter top materials is composed of 93% quartz; translation: It's pretty damn hard, harder than granite. You will never get a smooth edge hacking out a hole with a diamond grinder. Let the people with the correct tools do it. Or, you could always opt for the dynamite.
Later...
I've found a guy with a Computer driven water jet abrasive machine who will cut precision holes for only $13 apiece. Now if he could only come and get the damn thing out for me. Sigh... Back to the chisel.
use a 4.5 inch water fed circular saw. I think Jepson is one of the brands I see in the tool crib catalog. I have a hitachi I am very impressed with.
I use cheap blades for cutting circles ie. less than 15 dollars.
make a 1/4 ply template of the hole you want and clamp it to the silestone. Start cutting 1/4 to 1/2 inch in from the template and barely score the surface on your first pass. You just want to start a groove you can follow on each succeding pass. As you cut deeper the blade gets closer and closer to the template edge due to the geometry of a circular blade cutting deeper and deeper.
This is what 99 percent of the fabrication shops will do. Diamond jig saws and water jet saws are used very rarely.
I did a counter top installation at nordstroms cafe of silestone that had been fabricated elsewhere and they needed a local to install it. It worked much like granite. It was stronger and you could smell the polyester resin burning if you tried to cut it dry.
The other thing to look out for is weakening the top by cutting the hole (if you have to move it after cutting). Most stone tops with cutouts have rods embedded in the backside prior to cutting. Silestone is so tough you might get away without this.
If you need a perfect circle you might need to buy a segmented 3" diamond drum. I think granite city tool has good prices. Run this in a high speed angle grinder to square up and do the final shaping of the cut out. If it were granite you could use silicon carbide stones in a low speed grinder but I think they might overheat the polyester resin in the silestone and they are tough for a first time user to balance properly with a wheel dressing tool.
If you dont' mind buying the tools and can practice on some scrap, go for it.
karl
Thanks Karl
I think that since the vessel sinks are actually going to be cupped by the hole, it requires honing to a precision that my beat-up old hands have become incapable. So its off to the waterjet shop for me.