When I started out doing natural stone slab fabricating back in 1985 there was no fabricator organization like the SFA, the Stone Fabricators Alliance. Back "in the day," if you were going to tackle the mysteries of Natural Stone Fabrication you had very few options (if any) to get helpful information, guidance and mentoring to help you navigate through the hazards of the learning process. You resigned yourself to the fact that you WERE going to make TONS of mistakes - some of them very costly - if you did not have a "Plan-A" AND a "Plan-B" to keep yourself out of trouble.

Many guys like me were fortunate to be able to have lots of opportunities to "find out stuff on our own" and hopefully - transfer those "findings" into useful techniques that we would use to do better work on the slab projects that we started tackling. There were NO apprenticeships available for me to sign up for - that taught SLAB FABRICATION. No schools, no tool company sponsored "seminars", no websites (there was NO internet to speak of back in 1985) - just Marty McFly driving his souped up Delorean back into the past, and then into the future.

If you were really lucky, you may have found one guy or a relative that was willing to "reveal the secrets of the universe" to you - in the form of teaching you how to fabricate slabs.

That was then - and this is now. As many of you that have read what I have shared over the last few years will recall I have had the good fortune to be able to watch the "evolution" of our industry from the vantage point of 25 years worth of changes and improvements. Starting out as a "tile guy" in 1978, I added slab fabrication to what I do now back in 1985. Back then, there was this "mystique" about slab fabrication - almost to the point of treating our industry like it was some kind of "national secret" that only people with a White House "Yankee White" security clearance were even "considered" to be trustworthy enough to be "exposed" to these secrets of cutting, shaping and polishing - all by hand, and with no where near the amount of technology that we have become accustomed to today.

The MIA (Marble Institute of America) had been around in one form or another for decades, but when I got into the slab side of the industry in 1985, MIA was more of a "mystique" to me as I had no working knowledge of what MIA did, who could and could not be a member, or what the MIA had to offer me. All I knew about the then only Natural Stone Industry trade association was that it was some kind of mysterious "good-ole-boys" club - that I had no chance of even coming close to being able to access for my own improvement - let alone join. That was 1985 though, and a lot has changed since then.

Today, MIA stands as a "strategic" based organization that is promoting the use of Natural Stone, and thanks to the present leadership - it's no longer a "good-ole-boys" club. Industry standards that are used every day to assure quality workmanship have been set by MIA, and we all can thank them for helping to make our industry a better one.

But in 2006 a second Natural Stone Slab oriented trade organization was born - in the middle of a literal "explosion" in the demand for Natural Stone Slab countertops. This trade group was to be known as the Stone Fabricators Alliance, and was designed to help tradesmen that were either getting into the slab side of our industry, or guys that were already in the industry, and wanted to learn more ways of doing a better job and being more profitable at the same time.

The SFA since then has helped thousands of consumers and tradesmen alike in educating and promoting the Natural Stone Industry and the slab side of the industry in particular. With a website called "Stone Advice" - the SFA was launched to help guys in our industry - help each other. It started with a bunch of Fabricators getting together to share the things that they did with others - in an effort to work as a collaborative in sharing knowledge.

Membership in both MIA - and SFA, in my opinion, is critical in growing yourself personally, and as a business. The way I delineate the difference between the two groups is this way: The MIA is "strategic" and the SFA is "tactical.

Being a "tactical" oriented group - SFA focuses on "hands-on" issues for Fabricators. This is done multiple times a year with the SFA "workshops" - that take place in various parts of the country - in SFA member shops. Many times, SFA members open their shops to visits by people who are considering getting into the natural stone industry, and want to see a real operating shop for themselves - prior to them getting into the business.

This "tactical" concept was evident to me, first hand, when I attended the very first SFA workshop held in June of 2006 in Hubbard Oregon at my good friend (and Stone Advice founder) Mark Lauzon's shop. Techniques like seam polishing, rodding and surface polishing were shared, along with demonstrations by Laser Products and other "SFA Friendly" suppliers made the first of many SFA workshops a huge success.

This spirit of openness and sharing is what (in my opinion) makes the SFA a great organization to be a part of. You (as a new person to this industry) can learn a lot from the sidelines just watching and noting things. You can learn tons by actively participating - kind of like what the lottery folks say, "You can't win if you don't play," or in other words, "When it comes to the SFA, it just makes good sense to get allied!"

Until next month...

Best Regards & Happy Fabricating!

Membership in both the MIA & SFA is encouraged every month by AZ School of Rock. For more information, contact Kevin M. Padden at www.azschoolofrock.com, by phone at 480-309- 9422 or via e-mail at info@azschoolofrock.com

Left and Below: Photos from the first SFA gathering. Sharing rodding tips with Phil Auzas, Todd Luster and Kris Jorgensen. Below, Mark Lauzon watches a LT-55 demo by Drew Thorton.

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