When we remodeled our bathroom, we bought a big slab of quartzite for our countertop. The countertop only used about half of it, so we saved the offcuts. I designed a base and fabricated it mostly at Asmbly.
Why did it take so long? It would have been straightforward to make, except that I opted for things to not meet at right angles. I didn’t have the skills necessary to make everything meet up properly, and the first sides I made were warped enough to wobble. I ended up pausing the project for a while to take Intro to Layout and Fabrication at Austin Community College, and got much better results once I knew what I was doing.
Somehow I managed to make a simple welding project involve both the Laguna Swift CNC (to make an MDF jig to hold everything in place) and the Tormach (to make holes that actually lined up).
The most frustrating part of the project was actually spray painting it at the end. I’m still not happy with how it turned out because the paint is chipping in places. Maybe it’s not actually finished, and I need to get it sandblasted and powder-coated…
I like surface prep discs for removing mill scale, but for this, I also used a random orbital sander with 120 grit pads to try to give the primer a good surface to adhere to.
This was Rustoleum primer (two light coats within 5 minutes), and Rustoleum satin 48 hours later (again two light coats). I’m not sure if doing it in my garage when it wasn’t consistently over 50 degrees and was raining meant that it didn’t cure as well as it might have.
If it was the only based primer, weather will definitely play a role. I tend to try to spray it in direct sunlight so I can get heavy primer coats. Let that cure well and give it a sand. That usually covers any metal surface problems.
The slab is resting on stick-on rubber bumpers on the base. It’s heavy enough that it doesn’t move when you bump it, so it didn’t seem important to secure it further.
