SFA

I want to try to make a Silestone farm sink. What would be the best way to construct it, rabbit joint or miter joint? What CNC tooling would you use? Does anyone have any DXF files showing how you built it.

Any ideas would be great.

Thanks-

If you are rounding the front corners with say a demibull then I would just make the face piece butt jointed to the sides and bottom. You could rabbit joint if you want or just use some kind of plastic biscuit in the seam.

The bottom piece you can relief mill the bottom in an X shape, then set it on some 2cm blocks in all 4 corners and thermal form it to get a slant. Heck I would thermal form the face and laminate to a solid piece to give a curved effect with a nice fancy cap piece in front to hide the seam. Quartz can be fun to play around with. Here is a pic of a curved sink I made for a showroom display. Front and back are curved and so is the bottom.




Photobucket wont save it turned properly, my apologies.

Thermoform Silestone? I'm intrigued. How do you do it?

Make a mold or form to bend too. For the sink above I made a solid block mold to glue against after shaping. That is Ceaserstone but im sure any finer grained quartz would work. Big ole fish fry pot to get lots of boiling water. Mill the pieces down to 3/16 or an 1/8th. I have done complete circles for bathroom windows(sorry no pics) and you will brake some pieces. Practice clamping and I have used ratchet straps. I should make a tutorial some day when I get some time.

GuyboR wrote:Thermoform Silestone? I'm intrigued. How do you do it?

Just like he described above. When Caesarstone held a workshop on this in Nashville, we let them use our shop to cut and mill all the material they needed. It really is simple and will work with any fine grained brand of quartz. The ideal temperature for the water is 210 degrees (just before boiling). Make a form to mold it to, clamp one end and slowly pour the water on the surface and let it bend itself to the form. Clamp or strap as required to keep it tight. We did a sample top with mitered inside and outside radius edges. Sorry, I didn't get good pictures of it though.

My invite to that demo must have been lost in the mail?

WOW this opens a door to new possibilities! It never occurred to me that you may be able to shape quartz.

Dan R. wrote:My invite to that demo must have been lost in the mail?

Sorry Dan.

It really is simple to do. When I get time I want to make something to put in the showroom.

No problem Darryl.

Maybe we can have that as a workshop subject in the future.

That would be a great idea.

It is pretty simple once you get setup and practice a few times. I am pretty sure Caeserstone has a pdf or two about it on their site. I wish I had took pics of the round shower windows, they where fun to make. Now I want to make a farm sink and if I get some time soon Ill make one and take some pics of the process.

I don't know if it was here or stone advice, but I posted pics of an upper bar with a mitered arc we made this way before. Broke the first attempt, got the second one.

I thought Briggs did this way back when at his shop too maybe.

Cool stuff