Anyone have experience with COMPACT laminate ?

From my small experience with this dastardly product, it seems that once you've cut it, thats what you get. The inside of the stuff is quite different to the face, just looked like a glassy plastic, whereas the face was like slate. The stuff is astonishingly durable, dulls cutters and blades very quickly, and seems impervious to just about everything. I don't think that anything will stain the cut edges in any sort of reliable way, and I doubt that paint on the cut edge will really adhere. I tried to leave the factory edge on the viewable side, and hide the cut edges at the wall, or inside a join.

 

Post a picture of what you’re talking about, there’s a few variations of the stuff these days

 

I have seen results like your pic before. You won't like what i'm going to say though.
The cause is an underpowered router along with a blunt cutter and the fitter cutting too deep on each pass.
Cutting too deep with a blunt cutter and not enough power causes overheating along with cutter "chatter". You can clearly see the result of overheating at the surface of the top and the cutter "chatter" in the lines at the bottom of the groves.
The same thing will happen on any routed edge (sink cutout for instance) if the fitter used the same router, cutter and routing practice.

 

Well, if he bought the same router again and not a more powerful one, there lays the answer to your question.
The fitter along with the tooling he used and the way he used that tooling is the reason you are seeing the results you have.

 

so, what causes the grey/white/brown/black layering? Is that the effects of overheating? When I used the stuff, with a brand new cutter, I got a simple grey surface, very thin white line, black core, so not the same as this pic.

 

As mentioned in your post earlier @Rosso, this product is just about the worst stuff ever invented for worktops.
I started fitting it when it first appeared on the market and very very quickly found out that Yes, in theory you can use TC cutters for it. But, and it's a big but, TC cutters are not what are used during manufacture.
All the manufacture machining is done with Diamond tipped cutters. That is what i have used in my router and track saw ever since when fitting this stuff.
It's sold on a lie, it was sold on a lie to the industry at the beginning. Those of us that realized that at the start were ignored. What we have now though is this stuff is sold through "sheds" as a diy fit product when it clearly is not something that any diyer should be attempting to machine.
At the end of the day the base material of the product is paper, held together with resins and a whatever colourant, then placed under very high pressure to compress it.
Anything used to cut it that generates large amounts of heat will discolour it. That's why you see different colours with different types of compact laminate after it has been machined.
The only time you don't see that is when you use diamond tipped tooling. If the manufacturers told diy stores that though, they would drop the product like a hot spud.

 

It is laminate, what do you expect?

The top layer is impregnated printed paper and its edges are exposed when it is cut through.

It is what it is and as a customer you should have ensured this was the the product you wanted before it was installed.

 

When it is cut or machined, that edge you see is in fact 1000's of layers of paper. That's why linseed oil is used to "seal" that edge. Otherwise moisture will get in over time and the entire worktop will expand in width and in thickness.

 

Wow! Your fitter really struggled with them tops! Kitfit is correct blunt bit..naff router!You can try sanding the grooves with 180-down to 240 grit sand paper wrapped around a wooden spoon to get rid of the scorch marks.. be careful tho and start in 1 small area 1st to make sure it has the desired effect.

 

Absolutely babe on.

What you see is what you get.

 

Bang on not babe on, blame predictive text.