Page 2 - Demo

2|July 2020
Stone Studio
Continued from page 1
“We had looked at a building to buy in downtown Texarkana, Arkansas. It was where an old Coors beer distributor had been. It had everything we were look- ing for, including a 6,000-square- foot showroom space, and an 8,000-square-foot shop space. Luckily, we had a great team of guys, but none of them had any ex- perience with digital equipment.
“It was pro hockey player Wayne Gretzky who once said, ‘You miss 100 percent of the shots you didn’t take,’ so we took our shot at going fully dig- ital, and bought a Park Industries Saberjet XP 5-axis CNC, and a Park Industries Fastback 2 Edge Polishing Machine. We also went from hard templates to digital templating and a Slabsmith. This process was like going from a horse and buggy to a jet. It was a little painful in the beginning, but our people were very motivated to learn it, and they liked getting away from the manual labor.”
A Sasso K-Lux single head sur- face polisher was next on the list to be purchased, but due to the COVID-19 crisis in full bloom at the time of this interview, the K-Lux has been put on hold indefinitely.
Call to Duty
Speaking of COVID-19, Stone Studio has currently taken on the fabrication of something with a different twist, continued Dustin. “A while back, the Governor of Texas contacted all of the in-state manufacturers, and asked them to look at their operation to see if there was anything they could do to help with making medical supplies. I had thought about the fabric side and making masks, but that wasn’t for us and we couldn’t help. But I’m in an association, and one of my peers posted a pic- ture of an intubation hood. It’s a Plexiglas box that goes over
Slippery rock Gazette
“Our fabrication shop is outfitted with a Park Saberjet, a combination saw that cuts with a diamond blade and a water jet. We also have a Fastback II line polisher which can polish all our flat edges at 50 inches per minute. We handle all our material with two Weha A1500 vacuum lifters. All of our inventory is digitally logged in our Slabsmith software, allowing the customers to view our inventory online, also allowing us to do precision grain matching.” – Victor Swithenbank
the patient’s head, so that when they cough, it keeps the cough vapor contained. It has holes in it, so that the doctor’s arms can reach through to do an exam or to install a ventilator. Anyway, a friend of mine is an ER doctor at a local hospital, and I asked him about making these hoods and he said, ‘Yeah, man! That would be great!’
“I then asked our people one Saturday morning what they
thought of the idea. We got the specs, had some Plexiglas de- livered from a local glass shop, switched gears and put the intu- bation hoods into production. By the end of the day that Monday we had built four, and sent them to a local hospital. Soon after, they called us back and wanted another four. The first person they tried it on tested positive for COVID-19, and it made us feel good knowing that we had helped a little bit. After that, we posted it on social media and the news caught wind of it, and then a lot of people called us asking us for one.”
People, Safety and Logistics
Not including Dustin, Stone Studio’s production staff con- sists of three shop craftsmen, four installers, one programmer, two sales people and an office manager. This small but efficient team produces an average of one kitchen per day. According to Dustin, time-consuming edges such as large mitered or waterfall are quite popular in their service area at the moment.
“Our people are very in- volved and detail-oriented, and
Above: Stone Studio fabricator Justin Moore finishes an aerosol protection box to be used by health care providers when in- tubating COVID-19 patients.
passionate about our stone fabri- cation business. They love it even more than me, and I really appre- ciate that. I’ve shown them trust, and it’s been reciprocal. I also think it’s really helpful to ask our people what they think we need, and what we can do for them. It also shows that you trust them to help you make decisions, in- stead of just making them on your own. They take great care of our customers. It’s almost scary how rarely I hear about a problem, be- cause they don’t want me to hear about it. And, heck, it makes me feel good that they solve it!”
For safety’s sake, Dustin has a voluntary OSHA consultation every year, he continued. “At first, I was very nervous about doing it, but it’s been a great relationship,
and hugely beneficial. There were some things that we didn’t know and seemed trivial to us, but it was important to OSHA, and it provides us with a layer of con- fidence, because if we do have an accident, we know that we did our best to prevent it from happening. Our insurance company likes this, as well.”
An approximate sales ratio of materials for the company’s 50/50 mix of residential and commer- cial clients is 25 percent granite and 30 percent quartz, with the remaining being a mix of quartz- ite and marble. Custom products consisting of countertops, show- ers, furniture and fireplaces are the norm.
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