The Case of Inside Corners
I was sitting at the counter next to the Admiral—an old sailor with a thousand stories and a face that looked like it had seen every one of ‘em. He was on his second cup of joe, talking about the time he almost sank the Minnow, when Flo set a steaming cup in front of me. She gave me a wink and went back to the register.
The rain was coming down in sheets, making the diner feel like the last dry place on earth. That’s when the phone rang—an old-fashioned rotary job that Flo kept around “for emergencies,” she always said. She gave me that look that meant, this one’s for you, stone boy.
“Stone Detective,” I growled into the receiver.
“Yeah, I got a countertop that’s cracking like an old sidewalk,” the voice on the other end croaked. “Every crack seems to start at the inside corners.”
That got my attention. I tossed a tip on the counter, gave the Admiral a nod, and headed out, the bell over the diner door giving its usual jingle as I stepped into the rain.
At the job site, it didn’t take a magnifying glass to see what was going on. The countertop was a beauty, alright—polished like a dance floor—but every crack started at a sharp, right-angle inside corner. Like a crime scene with all the bodies pointing to the same suspect.
I ran my gloved finger along one of the cracks, feeling the jagged edges. “I’ve seen this before,” I muttered. Sharp inside corners on stone are like magnets for cracks. Every time that countertop expands and contracts with changes in temperature—or maybe a heavy pot lands just right—every ounce of stress gets funneled to that sharp angle. It’s like trying to push a Mack truck through a keyhole.
You see, when a slab has a sharp inside corner, stress doesn’t spread out. It collects like rainwater in a pothole until the stone can’t take it anymore—and then, snap. But if you radius that corner—round it out just a bit—that stress has somewhere to go. It disperses like a crowd at a boxing match when the final bell rings.
I turned to the contractor, who looked like he’d just been read his last rites. “Listen, kid,” I said, giving him my best stone-cold stare. “Inside corners need a radius. You want to avoid cracks like these? You gotta round those corners out. It’s Stone 101.”
He nodded like a bobblehead on a dashboard, scribbling notes faster than a court reporter.
I tipped my hat and headed back into the rain, the case closed but the city still full of mysteries. And me? I had a date with the Admiral and another cup of coffee at the counter.
