How a Custom Sink Is Made, From Sheet Metal to Finished Bowl
- Dino Rachiele
- Aug 24, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Most people have never watched a sink being built. There is no reason they would have. Sinks arrive in a box, and whatever happened before that is somebody else's business.
I think it is worth seeing, because the differences between a sink that lasts a lifetime and one that does not are almost all invisible by the time it reaches you.
How a custom sink is made... It starts with a flat sheet
Every sink we make begins as a flat piece of metal. Nothing is stamped from a mold. There is no press that shapes a bowl in one motion. The sheet gets cut, then folded, then welded into a form.
That matters because it is what makes the work custom. A stamped sink is whatever size the tooling says it is. A sink built from a flat sheet can be any size at all, and it can be built to fit a cabinet that already exists.
Why we cut with a fiber laser
Precision starts with the cut. We use a fiber laser, and the pierce it makes in the metal is about 50 microns wide. That is narrow enough that you have to look closely to see it at all.
Other methods do not get there. A turret punch leaves an edge that has to be cleaned up before anything can be welded to it. A water jet is slower and leaves a rougher cut face. Both work. Neither gives you the edge quality you want going into a weld.
There is a second reason for the fiber laser. Most lasers cannot cut copper, bronze, or brass. Those metals reflect the beam. A fiber laser can, which is why we can build in all four metals rather than only stainless.
An imprecise cut does not stay a cutting problem. It becomes a welding problem, then a finishing problem, and eventually it becomes a corner that collects grime in somebody's kitchen. You fix it at the start or you live with it.
Bending the metal
The cut sheet goes to two different press brakes. They are precision machines, but precision in the machine is not the same as precision in the part. The bends on a custom sink get complicated, and getting them right still comes down to hand measuring before anything moves.
After each bend we check it against a gauge we cut in our artisan shop for that specific bend. The gauge runs the full length of the bend, not just a spot check at either end. If the bend has wandered anywhere along its length, the gauge finds it.
That step is slow and it is the reason the corners come out the way they do. A bend that is off by a small amount does not look like much on the bench. It shows up later as a corner that will not close cleanly.
Welding it into a sink
Once the metal is folded into shape, it gets tack welded to hold that shape.
Then the outside corners are fused using a TIG welding method we developed here. That applies to every sink we build, in every metal. It is proprietary, and it is the reason our corners behave the way they do rather than looking like two pieces of metal joined together.
The interior corners are handled differently depending on the metal, and that is where most of the hand work goes.
Finishing the interior corners
Our MicroWelded™ corners get micro-polished by hand. It is the slowest part of building a sink, and it uses tools most people would not associate with metalwork.
What it produces is a corner with no seam to clean around and nothing for food to catch on. Run your hand along the inside of one, and there is no transition to feel.
It is also why our sinks do not need a bottom grid. A grid exists to keep things off a surface that is hard to clean. Ours is not hard to clean.
If you remember one thing
Most of what separates our sinks from everything else on the market comes down to the corners.
A folded corner is faster to make and it works well enough to sell. It also leaves a seam, a stress point, and a place that never quite comes clean. You will not notice it in a photograph. You will notice it every day for the next thirty years.
We spend more time on the corners than on any other part of the sink. Not because it photographs well, but because it is the difference between a sink you tolerate and one you stop thinking about entirely.
If you are comparing sinks, put your hand inside the bowl and run a finger into the corner. That one test tells you more than any spec sheet.
Nobody buys a sink because of how it was welded. But it is worth knowing what you are paying for, and what you are not.
Let's talk about your kitchen
If you are considering a custom sink, the fastest way to find out what makes sense for your kitchen is a conversation.
I handle every design consultation personally by Zoom, seven days a week. These calls are complimentary and educational, never a sales pitch. Call me directly at 407-880-6903 or schedule a time here: https://calendly.com/rachiele/preliminary-discussion
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