Corian repair

[MarkB_MI]

Does anybody repair Corian? My late MIL had Corian countertops installed about 15 years ago in the house that's now one of our rentals. The crack in the picture below happened, according to our tenants, when somebody put a hot pan on the counter. It's about 8 to 10 inches long and less than 1/16 inch wide. We'd rather not replace the countertop; we'd probably end up replacing three Corian countertops will granite, a fairly expensive project for a house that will rent for around $1600 a month.

If I can't find someone who can fix the crack properly, I'm thinking of just filling it with epoxy. I could sand the countertop a bit and use the resulting dust to color the epoxy.

 

[Fred47M]

Maybe try a bathtub refinish company. They would likely have a resin or they'll slightly underfill with a skim coat type body filler. Then they would have all tint colors and splatter with airbrush. Your idea with the dust might work. Or taper crack with dremel or blade, fill and/or get a few close colors of auto touch up or cheap spray paint and dab on with needle to create the spec look. But make sure to underfill with filler or only fill level otherwise you probably have to get around some 1500 grit then polish.

 

[DoubleO7]

corian.com

Is that crack following a joint line from that corner??
Might be like a welded joint where a crack will be in the mother material at the base of the weld.

That corian site has a documentation section with a lot of articles that might help.

A corian dealer should be able to hook you up with a good installer that can make that crack disappear.

 

[Stephen Newell]

Repairing corian is really easy if the supplies are available. All you would need is the joint adhesive for that color top. The joint adhesive is the same material the counter is made out of. You could take a router with a v-groove bit and enlarge the crack and fill it with the joint adhesive. When dry it can be sanded flat like putty and polished and the spot would nearly disappear. The color may be Sierra Sandstone. It's the closest sample I have. Not sure you will be able to buy the joint adhesive. A number of years ago they changed their rules where you had to be a certified fabricator to purchase Corian materials. I don't know it that applies to the joint adhesive or not.

 

[Janicholson]

Water clear epoxy (24 hour cure) sand some material off of the back splash on the end or back side, not the exposed surfaces. You will need one half teaspoon. when the prep (below) is completed, mix the powder with the epoxy 2/3 powder, 1/3 epoxy making about 3/4 teaspoon full.
Use a piece of yarn the length of the crack, and push it into the crack about an eighth of an inch in the middle. At the ends get it as far as possible. Put masking tape along each side being very careful, or mask over the entire crack and use a razor blade to cut out the mask.
Use a sharpened wood splinter to apply the mix slowly enough to not leave bubbles. when 80 % cured, the tape can be pulled. Use a razor blade near flat to the surface to shave off the material sticking up. (sanding it is not desirable as it looks bad.
It is the best I have for a solution, If it is still way too visible, you have only lost a few dollars. Jim

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Is that crack following a joint line from that corner??

No, it's not a joint. It's in a solid slab. I'm sure a joint would be easily repaired.

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Water clear epoxy (24 hour cure) sand some material off of the back splash on the end or back side, not the exposed surfaces. You will need one half teaspoon. when the prep (below) is completed, mix the powder with the epoxy 2/3 powder, 1/3 epoxy making about 3/4 teaspoon full.

Thanks, Jim. I'll give that a shot if I decide to try to repair it myself.

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Repairing corian is really easy if the supplies are available.

Thanks, Stephen. I think my best bet is to find someone in the area who actually works with Corian. If I'm lucky, maybe they can locate a matching slab and just fab up a new countertop. It's an island, a fairly small one, but it needs to match two other countertops. The problem is nobody wants to do Corian around here anymore; there are so many granite shops and wholesalers in the Detroit metro area that granite is pretty competitive with Corian.

 

[mikeb789]

We have a corian counter in our kitchen, installed 15 years ago. After they installed it, they left a big slab of the corian from where they cut out to install the sink. Maybe you can find the slab from yours in the basement? To use as filler material sawdust, after cutting with a circular saw. I could send you my slab, but its blue with black specks. Its about a half inch thick with the color mixture throughout it.

 

[Stephen Newell]

I know how that goes, I used to make formica and corian tops in my shop but it has been decades since someone has asked for any. If you can't find a fabricator you might look for someone that does furniture repair and refinishing. There is a procedure called a burn-in patch where colored shellac is melted into a crevasse with a soldering iron. The speckles would be the hard part, the person doing that would more or less have to draw the speckles on with touch up markers.

After I made my original post I tried to find sierra sandstone at corian and if your top is that color it has been discontinued. I have this little piece that is 1/2x2x2 if that would help you any.

 

[PDRuff]

had a crack in a kitchen corian sink went from drain to 2/3 of the way to the rim (over 12 )long. Sink glued in, no easy way to replace, sink unusable because it leaked, took a dremel ground it wider, tape on the bottom side and used a product called Plast-aid powder and liquid you mix together starts very thin and thickens as you wait can apply at any point. Fixed sink over 10 years ago not a single issue yet.... sink is used everyday.
Plast-aid Multipurpose Repair Plastic
- Can be colored and tooled with long shelf life
-Cast, glue, fill and form
-Chemically fuses to ABS, acrylic, and PVC
-Cures in 15 minutes
-Mechanically bonds to rough surfaces such as wood, stone, and concrete

 

[stevieb49829]

Mark, IF you can contact a cabinet shop that makes and installs Corian, you MIGHT be able to talk them out of a few squirts from one of their tubes of two part Corian glue. They come color matched to whatever your Corian is, and they should also have a sample box for you to look through. We had partial tubes laying around for a lot of different colors, and all you have to do is switch out to a new mixing tip and squirt away (its a small, plastic, mixing gun). Like others, I suggest you open up the crack with a dremel tool a little more, and then use a putty knife to work the glue into the joint. Don't be slow!! It sets in as little as 3 minutes. Then sand off the excess and work progressively to whatever sheen matches the top. We usually finished with wet Scotchbrite on an orbital sander.

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Maybe you can find the slab from yours in the basement?

I don't think the installers left any material, and I'm certain it's not around if they did.

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Plast-aid Multipurpose Repair Plastic - Can be colored and tooled with long shelf life

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind if I decide to attempt a repair.

 

[stevieb49829]

Mark, If you can get the name of that color, let me know. I still have connections to Corian fabricators and might be able to help. Even our local Home Depot has samples. Beware, it might be another solid surface, such as HiMax, or Cambria (probably not Cambria), but there are other companies that make a similar product. There might be ID on the bottom of the slab. steve

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Mark, If you can get the name of that color, let me know. I still have connections to Corian fabricators and might be able to help. Even our local Home Depot has samples. Beware, it might be another solid surface, such as HiMax, or Cambria (probably not Cambria), but there are other companies that make a similar product. There might be ID on the bottom of the slab. steve

Thanks, Steve. I think my best bet is to get up with the company that originally installed the countertops. My wife kept some of her mother's paperwork, so I'll have her dig through it when she gets back into town next week. We might also be able to get that information from the outfit that built and installed the cabinets; we know who that is because we bought cabinets for our own house from them.

I looked at the bottom side of the countertops where it's exposed, but it seems they're backed up with a sheet of melamine, so any markings are covered up.

 

[stevieb49829]

Let me know if I can help more. My email is open. I almost stopped by my old cabinet shop yesterday, to see what they pay for a gun and tube of glue, but it was too quick of a trip into town. We built thousands of square feet of commercial Corian tops when I was the shop foreman there. They still try to bring me out of retirement once in a while. Steve