Slippery Rock Gazette

Since 1962, Bonstone Materials Corporation has been a company synonymous with quality adhesives used for the bonding and patching of natural and engineered stone. Always on the cutting edge of development, it is no surprise that they would introduce the next generation of epoxies to satisfy the demand for white or light stone countertops.

The trend for light-colored countertop colors in an exterior setting seems to be increasing as upscale households extend their living space into the great outdoors. Kitchens, tables and tiki bars on decks and patios are quite vogue within this demographic.

So leave it to Bonstone to not only to create a superior working product for light-colored interior stone, but also an ultraviolet-resistant product that will look good and last year after year, explains Bonstone salesman Rob Elliott. 

“Bonstone developed Touchstone Silk after we began hearing from some of our Glacier users. When working with large assemblies like waterfall edges, Glacier was too fast drying, and they needed a small army of clampers to keep up! 

So they asked us for an alternative product — one that had the non-staining and knife grade consistency of Glacier, but had a much longer ‘working time’ so they could get all their clamps in place before the glue set.  So we developed Touchstone Silk Gel to meet this need.”

“It’s a very different epoxy compared to Glacier — but it meets the fabricators’ needs. As a plus, it’s also got really good ultraviolet stability — worlds better than a typical epoxy.”

Touchstone Silk gel is a translucent, milky-white, two-part epoxy that features a working time of 25 minutes and a setting time of about two hours depending on both the ambient and stone temperatures, said Elliott, adding, “Two-component epoxies are typically the strongest adhesives on the market.

Additionally, Touchstone Silk Gel works well with light-colored stones and will not bleed or cause any staining. It has a very unique chemistry that adds better ultraviolet color stability, more resistant to yellowing in the outdoors than other epoxies.

Its milky-white translucent color is also a big plus, because it picks up the variations in the stone. Touchstone colors can also be easily added,” and there’s an additional advantage: During the 20 minute working time, it spreads “smooth like butta!” 

“The nice thing about Touchstone Silk Gel,” continued Elliott, “is that when you are mixing the part A and part B together, it stays the same consistency and doesn’t become runny — staying more like knife grade.”

Its strength, however, is the really big benefit, said Elliott. “It is a product that is going to last a very long time, indoors or out, and that is the beauty of epoxies. When you put a miter or lamination together, one of the things that our customers have said over the last few decades is that our products give them peace of mind knowing that they are not going to fail.” 

Touchstone Silk Gel Epoxy is available from Braxton-Bragg.com in quart, gallon and five-gallon sizes, and is proudly made in America. Product and material preparation information as well as technical data such as flexural strength and modular strength are available on the company’s website at www.bonstone.com.