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I sold 2 jobs back to back one to a friend and one to a customer I picked up off a business ad on Craigslist. I ordered the material and glue from Domain Industries and the stuff arrived just as it was supposed to , no cracks no chips and the one color called Roman earth sheared right on the pallet as I slide it off just enough to lift it and take it in the shop.( i used 2 people and we work well together)
Next week I ordered 3 sheets of Scarlet Crystal and the section I was working on was a L shape that was going to have a field seam and eventually make a c shaped countertop. the counter cracked as if there was an imaginary 45 degree chalk line popped. I was able to cut out the crack and reseam and save that sheet. I went to fabricate the other 8 ft section and it cracks and fingers al the way across the top the 25 inch width…
I’m pretty new to this material and i’ve picked up livingstone and corian and had it flex and wobble and this stuff was the most brittle stuff ever. I had 2 pieces of fall off on a pallet that I picked up to try and salvage the last crack and the color had “leached out of a section” for the lack of a better term
I called Domain and they said the material was a blend and it was more brittle than what I was used to. I don’t care for avonite as its the same thing its a blend and its brittle and I won’t sell it. they told me there wasn’t anything they could do but they’d try to help me out if I ordered more sheets or If I ordered some sinks they would help me a little bit..
I felt so bad about the material and the constant cracking I gave the customers thier money back as they didn’t want anything else and I’ve eaten 2600.00 in material…
I guess after all of that sob story and Avonite bashing My question is has anybody had bad material??? Or a job that nothing went right???
My business is small and a 3000.00 plus hit after glue, fuel and not including labor I’m pretty much screwed but a lesson well learned…..Jason I have sold and installed a bunch of Affinity and have not had your problems. At one time I was doing 6 to 10 Kit. a month. True it is more brittle and does not flex like the others but we found it no big deal.
Bummer Jason, I feel for ya. I have never done Affinity but hI have done heaps of Avonite poly and blends. I cant say I have never had issues except for the time a sheet fell over. Cha ching! Since the material is so expensive by the time it reaches us we always handle it like it was glass. Definetly not as forgiving as acrylic. I attended the Avonite fab program so I could become an expert with it. It was well worth it. I may suggest it to anyone who does poly types. I will add that the fee was more than reasonable for all I learned. Sometimes cracks occur in the shipping process and dont show up untill it’s too late…yep it’s a bummer.
Jason As others have said it has more to do with being a poly product rather than an acrylic product. One is not better than the other, just different, and offer different attributes. If you only capable of doing the very forgiving acrylic and not wishing to learn how to handle and fabricate poly material, then by all means stay with the acrylic product. But to me, that would be like saying Oak is easier to work with than Cherry, so I’m only going to make oak cabinets. You want to be a solid surface fabricator, than I would learn to fabricate all types of solid surface. In the long run you will make a lot more $$.
I would say the difference between the two is similar to the difference between plexiglas and glass.. Is one better than the other ? Plexi is much easier to fabricate, but glass is a damn good product for the right application.
Good Luck !
Jason, just use a little more care handling the sheets, and the finished tops for that matter. Use two people to evenly roll the sheets on their to carry them, and lay them down evenly and lightly on to a level (clean) work surface and you should be fine.
It sucks that it broke, but couldn’t you just glue it back together. Granite is extremely brittle but once in place, it’s perfectly fine. There is no reason the customer would ever know the difference and is not being deceptive, it is just an accidental breakage that can be fixed. Does the material have a pattern?
I would carry the material vertically and be very careful.
Blended materials tend to snap when there is a small crack at the edge. No warning, just a snap and the pieces fall to the ground.
Ithad a slight pattern. The adhesive match from plexus was a color called icicle blue. Which was literally clear with a blue tink. Amazingly enough it tookthe. Color of the material. But still left a less than inconspicuous seam and in the L top there would have bbeen 3 seams within close proximity to each other and I wouldn’t have accepted the job so I was at a point where I didn’t have much faith in the product so I gave the customers their money back… I went to the ISSFA school and we practiced with corian second hand material. I didn’t realize there was a school for the poly blends as well:…
Im not opposed to learning the other stuff but I don’t want to haveto retool up completely for another product. As im already doing the acrylics and Concrete countertops…. I understand a few small tools and maybe a new adhesive gun but im still small time and haventfound my break into the market. Im stilling working for the fire department full time and working part time. When I don’t have jobs pending. But im trying to get to where I just have the fire department and the counters gig
I would not shrug away from poly. We keep some fall off on hand and use it alot on custom vanity tops. It’s got as Gene would say “the Shizzle”! folks love it. I pull the sheets out and give them a squirt with some alcohol, sold! Give Brent Hubbard at Avonite a call and see what the schedule is for their class on poly.
Posted By David Gerard on 09 Apr 2012 01:24 PM
I would not shrug away from poly. We keep some fall off on hand and use it alot on custom vanity tops. It’s got as Gene would say “the Shizzle”! folks love it. I pull the sheets out and give them a squirt with some alcohol, sold! Give Brent Hubbard at Avonite a call and see what the schedule is for their class on poly.
David How different is the class than say the ISSFA solid surface 1 class thats held in Utah???
Jason, you don’t need different “Tools” just a different mind set
Think of Acrylic as plexiglas and poly as glass, just need to handle it different to be successful. I’m surprised the ISSFA course didn’t cover the differences. Also the “guns” used are the same for each product, in fact the adhesive is the same.
Good Luck !FYI, Avonite has a polyester line and an acrylic line of product. We’ve used literally thousands of sheets of their acrylic materials with never a crack or a problem.
Polyesters do take a little more care, but I’ve noticed that some formulations are more brittle than others. I swore off of Formica’s product before their last formulation because it seemed like just looking at the material would make it crack. They claim that the newer formulation is better, and maybe it is.
they went over the differences and I assumed it was the same gun, techniques etc… but like you said Len with formicas product I barely touched the Affinity and it was cracking and breaking
Jason,
you dont need a separate training for Poly, you just had some really bad luck on those sheets. Be careful with blends, EOS is a blend but its realy thick so unless our shipper breaks it you dont have to worry about being so worried about material handling as a 1/2″ blend. Poly, acrylic, and blends are all good materials, just make sure you inspect and move the material as soon as it delivers, if you would have found those cracks and issues before the driver departed you could have rejected the delivery and not had to eat the entire order. Each material has unique benefits and down falls, all should be handled with care.
When I was doing Corian distribution I heard a quote from the owner of the company to one of warehouse guys as he was walking across a sheet of Corian to get to something in the warehouse……..Owner of the distributor: ” Hey Scott, do me a favor and bring in your flat screen TV tomorrow for me” Scott the warehouse guy: “Why?”….Owner of the distributor: “So I can walk on it like you are doing to that 900.00 sheet of Corian!”
That sank in pretty deep with the warehouse guy and everyone that witnessed it, I no longer walk across sheets in the warehouse, even if they are 3cm thick.You know, we have accepted sheets that appear perfect. When you pick them up the break before they come off the pallet. We assumed the pallet was dropped causing the stress crack. As we picked up the piece, the crack became obvious.
Maybe that is what happened here. I find it hard to believe that you had the same issue with all the sheets. After you though you broke the first, you would have been very careful with the other sheets. Something must have been wrong with the sheets.
Just another guess.
Hell, maybe Gordon walked on your sheets.
I’m guessing that Affinity is being made in China and bought by an American company who rebrands them as Affinity and sells them in the US.
From what I understand, quality in China varies widely from great to very poor depending on the plant that makes the product. If you have an American vendor who closely monitors product quality, you have a better chance than a company that doesn’t have quality control staff on site.
The material you just ate makes that cheaper price look not so inexpensive, right? How many jobs will you have to sell to cover the cost of the loss?
There are some great imported products available at a competitive cost. Why bother with a company who won’t make good on inferior product?
YMMV.
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