-
Posts
-
Last week I had a refinish job to do for a customer. She wanted all her tops and her double sink refinished.
The tops were no problem. The sink… Well, that was a bit of a problem. The sink had severe crazing on the entire bottom of both sinks. It looked doubtful that I would be able to sand deep enough to get rid of all of it.
She was hesitant about replacing the sinks with new solid surface sinks and face the problem again. I suggested allowing me to spend a little bit of time sanding on it to see if it was even reasonable to pursue refinishing. After spending about 20 minutes on one half of one sink, I still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of some of the crazing. I continued on to the flat surfaces. As I said, no problem there. In the mean time my customer had gone into town and found a “Granite Composite” sink that she loved. She called me and asked if the new sink would fit in the old hole if we cut out the bad sinks. I informed her that the hole would need to be filled in since the old sink was a custom configuration of two large single sinks and was larger than the new sink cut out required. She asked if we could use her small desk top to create an accent trim ring to fill in the hole, leaving a band of accent around her new sink.Yup, that would be possible. But I was out of time for today and would need to make it another trip. (two hours each way).After giving her a price and getting the go ahead I decided to remove the desk top that day and fabricate the trim ring at the shop so that it was ready to install on the next trip. I was anticipating cutting the ring in one piece out of the desk top. It turns out that the desk top was Avonite and glued down with large globs of silicone about every 6 inches. It came off in about 20 pieces. Oh well, I gave her a price and I would stick to it.The pieces of the desk top glued back together just fine. Added about an hour and a half to my time. I made the trim ring and a male female bevel template for insetting the trim ring.On my subsequent trip, I began by using my Plunge saw to cut the straight sides of the sink.
Then I used a router to cut the corners while having the sink supported by glued on blocks.
Using the female portion of my template I cut a bevel all around the opening.
I adjusted the router depth a couple of times until the male portion and the trimring sat flush with the female template.
Glued the trim ring in and sanded it off.
In the background you can see that I am also filling in the front of the cook top cutout. she is replacing the old top with a new convection top and the old hole was too large.This is a photo of the some pieces of the old sink when I busted it up. I am so glad that I didn’t spend any more time on it. The stain in the crazing goes more than 1/8″ into the bottom of the sink. It also fractured along the crazing lines when I beat it with a hammer.
Personally I think that poly sinks are more prone to crazing than acrylic, but both will craze from multiple exposure to boiling water if the homeowner doesn’t bother to turn on the cold water while emptying a pot of pasta water.Johnny CGreat photos and explanation.
Looks like a kitchen worth saving. Did you also do a repair on the cooktop area?
We just had a lady come in with the same crazing but it was on a Fountainhead K020. Remember those babies?
Thats some darn fine work there!
As far as poly vs acrylic I think it has something to do with the glass transition temp, which is lower for poly. Although acrylic sinks craze and crack too. Just sayin! 🙂
Posted By Andy Graves on 29 Aug 2012 08:43 AM
Great photos and explanation.
Looks like a kitchen worth saving. Did you also do a repair on the cooktop area?
We just had a lady come in with the same crazing but it was on a Fountainhead K020. Remember those babies?
Yes. And while I was at it I cut away a bit of the top of the face frame so that I had space to add corner reinforcement blocks.
Johnny C
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.