Can anyone offer any thoughts on how I trim down laminate worktop edging strip. The worktop is 40mm tall and the edging strip which came with it (Duropal) is a good 45mm. The material is tough and brittle.
Cutting Laminate Worktop Edging Strip?
- Thread starter rqy99g
- Start date
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Hi,
According to here:
You use scissors!
TBH, I think I used scissors too (followed by some gentle sanding), but it was a few years ago now!
According to here:
TBH, I think I used scissors too (followed by some gentle sanding), but it was a few years ago now!
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Steel ruler and many light passes of a new stanley blade.
Once attached you can then smooth the edges with 240 grit sandpaper (or even 120 if you have a light touch)
Once attached you can then smooth the edges with 240 grit sandpaper (or even 120 if you have a light touch)
D
Deleted member 292770
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Cheers for the advice.
I'm not sure scissors will touch it but I'll give it a try first.
Why couldn't they just have made it 42mm?
I'm not sure scissors will touch it but I'll give it a try first.
Why couldn't they just have made it 42mm?
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I use a scalpel, after gluing flush to top edge, then cut flush and sand across edge only.Scissor are a very amateur solution imo.( tends to crack the brittle material rather than cut).
Forgot my scalpel once and glued to edge leaving a few mm top and bottom then used an electric sander to sand off top and bottom overhang .Worked just as well .
Forgot my scalpel once and glued to edge leaving a few mm top and bottom then used an electric sander to sand off top and bottom overhang .Worked just as well .
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D
Deleted member 174758
Not a cat in hell's chance on the stuff I've worked with unless they are heavy tailors shears (and if your missus is like mine she'd break your fingers if you try using hers!). You'd either need proper laminate shears (expensive, hard to source) or straight tin snips (but even they will only do short lengths before propagating cracks) if you want to cut that way, but personally I have never bothered
If you want to remove excess material you can just get laminate scoring blades for use with a Stanley knife (ref 5194 or 11-941):
These do need to be used with a steel straight edge and the old basic Stanley 99 or 199 knife - the type without blade retraction is the best bet with them. The alternative would be a carbide laminate scorer, something like a Bon or a Gundlach:
Again, use with a steel straight edge, but maybe overboard for a one-off.
Scoring tools need to be guided are not for freehand use. Laminate requires a fair bit of pressre to score it and is often very skiddy to score
That's because worktops come in different thicknesses from 28mm upwards and because you need a small allowance to ensure that any mismatch when installing it can be covered. Remember: if you have glued both surfaces and left them to dry they will grab very strongly when put together and cannot be piulled apart and repositioned. Worktops also frequently have a slight bow across the width, and in any case filiing-in is the way you finish the job off. Trade strips are often 50mm wide or wider, sometimes as deep as 75mm (for 70mm deep tops)Why couldn't they just have made it 42mm?
When positioning laminate strips I tend to leave the greatest amount of the waste to the bottom edge if I can, with only a millimetre or less projection at the top (less to file off).
I do tend to use a laminate trimmer (trim router) with a carbide cutter to trim the stuff (trade) but if on site and lacking the trimmer I'll score slightly oversize and snap off excess with a pair of pliers or the like. I roughly shape the ends to be slightly oversize.
The glue is now applied to the trim strip and the laminate - if it is very dry or coarse in texture it may be necessary to give it two coats of glue with a wait for drying between each coat. This is because the first coat merely seals it and much of it gets absorbed - so the surface is still rough and dry after coating it once,m add a second thin coat and let that dry
I stick them together (as detailed above) and apply a bit of pressure (block of wood with a bit of cloth wrapped round it run one end to the other to roll out any ait pockets). I then file off the last bit of waste off with a fine single cut file (Bahco do them, just a metal file, 8 to 10in long with a moulded-on handle, a cheap Chinese one will do as well - but the file must NEVER have been used on metal before filing plastic as that blunts them). You make inwards strokes only at about 30 to 40 degrees off square to the edge and about a 5 to 10 degree angle from the horizontal. DON'T drag the file side to side as she does in the video as it can dig in. You can tell when you have got down to the surface level because the adhesive squeeze-out sort of balls up and detaches. A bit of P120 on a sanding board at 45 degrees will take the arriss (sharp edge) off but don't overdo it, a single stroke or maybe two should suffice
BTW the video is wrong on a few points - and what a pallaver! There was absolutely nothing wrong with the first strip she pulled out - you should always file-in the edge and not depend on it being straight (in part because worktops themselves are often bowed a millimetre or so across the width). A tradesman simply scores and snaps off the end piece slightly oversize, applies glue to both surfaces, waits 15 to 20 minutes (NOT touch dry as there may still be trapped solvents beneath the surface when initially touch dry), applies the edging with a slight overhang at the top pivoting it downwards and then applies pressure to "roll-out" any trapped air, then files to finish. There is no need to mask anything if you aren't messy with the glue as any excess will ball-up when rubbed with the finger once it has set. At least she got the filing more or less right (with the caveats I mentioned above about angles).
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Thats the best method that I find works for me.
D
Deleted member 174758
The problem with the manual Virutex edge trimmer is that it can't handle thick laminate edgings - it is designed for 0.8mm or so thick pre-coated malamine edging tape, not the thicker HPL laminate used for worktops. So it depends on how thick your edging is - if it's the normal stuff you see on decent kitchen worktops you'll find it hard work or impossible, if it's the thin iron on stuff it will work - but you still need to file the edges to deal with the post formed front edge and the razor like arrisses left by the Virutex
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