How to Pick the Right Sandblast Stencil for Stone Without Wasting Time or Money
For clean and crisp engraving designs on stone, sandblasting is really the only option. Of course you can hand carve your patterns, but this requires a lot of skill and time to get the same depth of etching and a lot of patience to get tight lines on more intricate patterns. Sandblasting allows you to control the depth of your engraving and more control over the shape of your design. However, you’ll still need to make sure that you’re picking out a high quality sandblasting stencil for stone to ensure professional grade results every time. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, and you can waste plenty of time and money trying to find the right sandblasting stencil for your project.
Know Your Stones
Before you even start looking at different sandblasting stencils for stone, you need to know the qualities of the material that you’re engraving on and how it will react to the sandblasting process. You’ll find 3 broad categories of stone that you will work with on a commercial basis. Firstly, there’s softer stones such as limestone and sandstone. These are more brittle, making it easier to get a deeper cut, but they can be hard to get crisp lines. On the other end of the scale, you get the tough stones that resist abrasion, such as granite and quartz. These are easier to get shallow crisp lines with sandblasting, but you’ll need patience and time to cut deeper designs. In the middle, you’ll get the majority of stone types that you’ll work with, such as slate. These offer a balance between depth of cut and clarity of design.
Of course, in a commercial setting, you’ll be at the mercy of whichever stone type your client wants you to work with, so it’s important to have an idea of what you’re working with before you start shopping for sandblasting stencils.
Picking the Right Sandblasting Stencil
As with all artistic paid work, you will be judged solely by the quality of the final product. This means that you need to get the highest quality sandblasting stencil that your budget will allow. However, there’s a lot of options out there, and while some brands may sound premium, you need a company who has decades of experience with sandblasting who can match you with the right stencil for your project. Enter U-Blast. Our team of sandblasting experts are ready to work with you to understand the needs and complexities of your upcoming stone project. You’ll always get an authentic discussion (no sales pitch or corporate jargon from us!) and all of our products are backed by extensive testing and feedback from the field.
All Purpose Winner
For the majority of stone based engraving projects, you’ll always find success with our flagship UB2 stencil roll. This is our longest-running line, meaning that you benefit from 15 years of upgrades and feedback to get a stencil that will work with nearly all stone types. This stable adhesive performance is further enhanced by our new Anti-Shift Mesh™ Surface Technology, which integrates a structural mesh layer that reduces stencil movement after cutting. This results in better alignment retention, reduced repositioning, lower risk of design distortion, and greater confidence in delayed-blast workflows.The newly formulated stable adhesive reduces stencil shift meaning that you’ll get crisp lines no matter the temperature of the underlying surface. It is a double liner stencil which gives you a white polyester liner on the outside and a yellow film between the rubber and the liner so you can transfer designs easily. It’s thick enough to withstand extended periods of sandblasting and strong enough to keep its shape even with the most intricate of designs.
Aggressive Adhesion
When you’re faced with a rough-cut stone surface, either by choice or by accident, you need a sandblasting stencil that has a high level of adhesion to make your design stick. The 721 seriesis specifically designed for rough stone surfaces and comes with our highest level of adhesion. We’ve also designed it to be extra thick because if you’re sandblasting into a rough stone surface, you’ll also be sandblasting for extended periods of time, and your stencil needs to be able to stand up to the extended pressure.
Delicate Designs
When you’re working with a softer stone type, you need a stencil that will give you good flexibility but with a lower amount of tack so you can remove it easily once the project is complete. Our malleable 720 liner is made specifically for these kinds of projects. It’s made from our unique synthetic rubber so putting it through a plotter machine and weeding out the design are simple processes, and you’ll still get the same strength and flexibility to make sure you get a professional finish every time.