Using it to best effect in your project
What do you do when your client wants an intricate custom feature in their tile or stone installation, but you don’t have the skills or time to create it by hand – or their budget doesn’t support a hand-shaped or nipped mosaic?
Enter waterjet!
Waterjet medallions, mosaics, and art elements are employed by a range of tile contractors, for a range of reasons, chiefly budget.
“I make my presentation to a client with a menu,” said Dustan Morgan, at Morgan Tile CA, Nevada, City, Calif. For instance, a simpler art element might be $500, or $1,000 for another feature that has more hand-cutting and crafting. “I make what they want work for their budget.”
Another reason to choose waterjet pieces is when a lot of scrollwork is involved, said Lee Callewaert, tile artisan extraordinaire of Dragonfly, now in Tennessee. “A lot of scrollwork is not marketable as a hand-shaped mosaicist,” he said. “It would take you forever and you would lose money.”
Cost plays a factor in large scale projects too. “We’ve done 30’ x 20’ waterjet inlays,” Callewaert said. “There’s no way we could compete. But there’s no reason to say ‘I don’t do that.’ Get with a waterjet company and customize the design, even just tweak it, in whatever material you want: glass, marble, or even brass inlays.”
You can customize the feature by the choice of materials and colors or even adding elements to the original design to tailor it more to the client’s desires – flourishes, symbols, shapes and other details to make it truly one of a kind.
In the thick of it
One thing to be wary of is the thickness of the materials in question in a waterjet art element or medallion – and of the tile it will be scribed into. Keep in mind plumbing fixtures already in place in renovations may affect the thickness of the material to be used.
“If you are doing new construction or a design build, there is more flexibility to build out the wall” for a waterjet feature, Morgan said.
In addition, ”Certain materials are too fragile” for waterjet cutting and fabrication, he added. Spirit of Stone in Haywood, Calif., – the waterjet company he works with – collaborates with him to find the best materials within budget for the project. “[Andreas] will get a sample of the material and put it on the machine,” Morgan said. “He’ll tell me ‘No way,’ or ‘This is perfect!’”
Scribing and craftsmanship
Callewaert said 99% of medallions and waterjet features will be round, square or rectangular, and will require radius or straight cuts.
But more intricate waterjet features take precision scribing. In a recent feature of waterjet flowers inset into a porcelain marble-look tile, Morgan said he wrestled with some of the points, using fingernail files from the Dollar Store.
He highly recommends doing a mock up before installing it. “Get some extra tiles, glue to a piece of board and see if there is a thickness differential,” he advised. “Are you premounting the mosaic? Take into account the thickness, tolerances and plumbing.”
For a feature like this flower mosaic, he recommended taking a petal, and going through all the steps including filing to a finish before you put your hands on the actual installation. “Do you need a grout release? Enhancer for the stone? Don’t do this live on a project.
“Before you glue everything together and have it solid, install it in your mind,” Morgan said. “Make sure you have the layout right – in the right spot. Then by the time you are actually installing the mosaic, you’ve done your due diligence.”
Erin Albrecht, Owner at J&R Tile in San Antonio, Texas, does a lot of artistic installs including medallions and art elements. “The craftsmanship is in the installation of the product,” she said.
The need for precision cannot be overestimated. On a recent project in The Chapel of the Incarnate Word, J&R Tile needed to center a waterjet medallion precisely down the main aisle of the church, which is all stone. J&R drew up the medallion with Sketch Up Pro on CAD in house, and then sent the CAD drawing to a local waterjet shop.
When choosing a waterjet company, Albrecht said she searches geographically for a shop near the project and asks for pricing. She prefers to keep the shop hyperlocal – in the neighborhood of the project – and opts to support women-owned businesses.
After the medallion or feature is cut, J&R brings it back to the shop to mosaic-mount it with face tape, which gives the smaller pieces better adhesion in the back. “We can really dial in the pieces where they need to be,” she said. The contractor also enlarges it on the printer and makes sure everything is matched to scale, then mud floats it. Then it is diamond-polished, grouted and sealed.
Waterjet sheet mosaics
Another use of waterjet tile and stone are sheet mosaics that are ready for installation, (see the Artistic Tile entry in our Product Focus on page 62 of the May 2025 issue of TileLetter). “The mosaics are cut from stone for most installs and are fairly common in our world,” said Woody Sanders of D.W. Sanders Tile & Contracting from Marietta, Ga.
Another use for waterjet technology is cutting floor vents in the stone floor, he said. “Waterjet is to us today just another tool with access to several vendors we use.”
There are many ways to customize a project and make it stand out to your client. Explore waterjet features and shops to expand your creative offerings to your clients, and keep them cost-effective.
Lesley Goddin has been writing and journaling since her first diary at age 11. Her journey has taken her through a career in publishing and publicity, landing her the editor position of TileLetter and its special publications in 2006. Her goal is to educate, inspire, recognize and encourage those in the tile industry -- especially the tile and stone contractor.
