FA B R I C AT I O N
Monolithic masterclass Joe Simpson, international correspondent for Discovering Stone, attended a three-day masterclass on porcelain panel fabrication techniques by Roberto Colonetti from Perth-based European Ceramics
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rom being one of Western Australia’s largest importers of ceramic tiles, European Ceramics has expanded to include bathroom and kitchen fabrication on an industrial scale, including shower trays, vanities, worktops, island units, and much more. As a result, the company is now at the forefront of porcelain
Roberto has extensive experience of using XXL format slabs from Mirage. Pictured is its Glocal range.
design and installation, and is an acknowledged expert not just in Western Australia but world-wide. Roberto’s hands-on porcelain training course covered cutting and detailing to produce invisible mitre joints, detailed step-by-step fabrication of the perfect base structure for basins, worktops, shower trays, sinks, and other items. And, for the purpose of this article, it also looked at the selection of the ideal type of adhesives and grouts for this kind of complex, hand-made, fabrication. Failure-free performance and high-end aesthetics must go hand in hand form these type of projects. The session, attended by fabricators mainly from the natural stone sector, along with material suppliers such as Porcelanosa, Neolith, and Dry Treat, really drilled down on this topic. Roberto has extensive experience of using XXL format slabs from Florim, Atlas Concorde, Mirage, and many of the other leading European porcelain slab manufacturers. He uses adhesives and grouts from major brands like Kerakoll and Mapei, but made no secret that, for
him, CerCol provides the optimum range of construction chemicals for bespoke kitchen and bathroom installations, whether manufactured from porcelain or conglomerate alternatives such as Quartzform or Cosentino. CerCol has created a dedicated product range for this market. It is designed to allow fabricators to maximise the benefits of porcelain slabs such as UV- and chemicalresistance, colour fastness, heatresistance, and tensile strength. The seamless installation also allows the major advantage of porcelain stoneware – its ability to imitate, through use of modern decorating technology, the characteristic surface textures of materials like marble or corten steel – to be used to maximum advantage. Ceramic furniture is made by cutting porcelain slabs of different thicknesses to shape, and then bonding them to a preformed framework, generally made of structural composite panels. Roberto prefers Wedi, but also uses other foam-based backerboards for these base structures. These panels usually contain a
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