Introduction to Slate-ish
What the heck is this stuff?
Slate-ish is a unique product, somewhere between wood and stone, using a
raw material that was never intended for this use…
Here’s the explanation:
Who We Are
We can’t really tell the story of Slae-ish without talking about how we started making it. To do that, we have to start at the beginning.
The short version: we built a straw bale house in 2000, and though our search for green building materials, started our own green building supplly company, Straw Sticks & Bricks.
One of the products we sold and installed was a paper/resin composite coutertop material. One fateful day, Josh dropped a chunk, saw the way it fractured, and decided to test an idea. IT LOOKED AWESOME!
We added Slate-ish to our product offering, and sold a few small projects. Weilding a hammer and chisel for hours can be tiring, and dangerous, so we kept it to a minimum.
What’s it made from?
The raw material we get is a laminated paper and resin sheet material, normally used for commercial furniture, countertops, lockers and such
These sheets have a surface coating that is either colored or patterned. When we cut and split it, this color or pattern becomes the back of some pieces. Splitting the paper/resin composite is a lot like natural stone - it reveals the layers and gives it a textured appearance.
Sourcing our material
When we launched Slate-ish as it’s own company in 2014, we knew we had to find more raw material.
For many years, we bought off-cuts and fabricator scrap in small quantities. When we had to look for more, we also had to make some changes to how we offered the material, and over a few years, went to a single source for our material, which also meant a single color. We added our surface coatings as a way to add color and give our product the variety it needed.