A glass or stone fabrication shop is a place where everything being handled is both finished and dangerous. A sheet of glass or a slab of marble is at its most valuable the moment it is finished and at its most fragile at its edges. Protection in this environment is not about construction traffic – it is about benches, stillages, trolleys and floors that come into contact with the product all day.
Edges are the whole problem
A finished slab or pane is hard on its face and fragile at its edge. Anything it rests on has to support it without concentrating load at that edge, and anything it is leaned against has to be soft enough not to chip it. A fibrous face does the second job well; the first job is about the shape of the support rather than the material, and it usually wants a fabricated cradle rather than a flat board.
What the floor takes
Offcuts, slurry and dropped pieces. Stone slurry is abrasive and alkaline and it gets ground into whatever floor it lands on; glass offcuts are sharp and go through soft protection. A floor in a fabrication shop wants a hard, impermeable, easily washed surface – and where the floor itself is finished or coated, a board that takes the impact and washes off.
Stillages and transport
The highest-risk moment is moving finished material. Stillage feet concentrate load and get dragged; a board under a stillage spreads that and stops the drag marking the floor. Where material is moved on a trolley, the route is what needs protecting rather than the whole shop, which keeps the order small and the protection where it does something.
Buying for a shop rather than a site
A fabrication shop buys once and uses for years, which changes the calculus completely: durability per year matters and unit price matters much less. Reusable board wins decisively over anything single-use, and it is worth specifying a thicker grade than a construction job would justify because the payback period is measured in years rather than weeks.
Benches and work surfaces
The bench is as important as the floor. A stone or glass fabrication bench takes the same material all day and its covering is what stops the product being marked by the bench rather than by the floor. A fibrous-faced board cut to the bench top is a cheap replacement surface that gets renewed when it wears, which is better than a hard bench top that has to be protected with rags and offcuts.
Chipped edges are the expensive failure
In a glass or stone workshop the costly damage is not a scratched face, it is a chipped edge or a cracked corner, because the piece is usually already cut to size and cannot be re-cut. Sheets and slabs are leaned against walls, stacked on trestles and moved on trolleys, and every one of those operations loads the edge.
Protection for this environment is mostly about separation: a non-marking layer between stacked pieces, and a resilient layer on any surface a piece is rested on. The felt face is the right side against a polished stone or a coated glass surface – it does not abrade and it does not transfer print. The studded face is useful on the floor of the shop, where offcuts and grit get dragged around. What does not work is a hard sheet directly against a polished edge, because vibration polishes a mark into the surface over time. The impact side of this is in protecting stone and terrazzo from chipped edges.
What we can do
We supply PP honeycomb protection board and fabricated cradles and stillage pads for finished material. Tell us what you handle, how heavy it is and how it moves, and we will say what goes under it – and what does not need anything. Contact behaviour against finished surfaces is covered in felt face against painted and decorated walls.