Swentastic:

Is the percentage of labor really any of your concern? How can it be if you're buying a total package of labor and material?

In this situation, it's best to consider the reputation of the fabricator. A successful fabricator doesn't get that way by doing bad work or charging too much. Shop value, not price.

Are you in an area where soapstone is fairly uncommon? Even if not, look hard for someone with experience with soapstone -- and get references for soapstone installations they've done.
Have you been able to grab a sample and abuse it? Or short of abuse, trying ordinary things, like scratching?

Do you know where each of the fabricators is getting their soapstone from? I learned that many will source their soapstone from m. Teix which is pretty authentic soapstone.

Don't know if this helps but we paid $1500/slab for our 2 slabs (so $3000 for the stone). Fabricating for 38 linear feet in the kitchen, 2.5' in the bathroom and another 5' for under our TV, came to another $4500.00 We did ask for a custom hand worked edge. Had we not done that, a regular edge would have cost us $3000 for the fabricating. So here in Vancouver, the fabricating was the same cost as the stone. And that estimate was about $1000 cheaper than the other company we went to.

I just realized I posted this thread then bailed on it. Thank you all for the responses. Yes, in this area there are not many fabricators who work w Soapstone so I've been educating them as I go along.

Treb - I'm not so much concerned with labor markups but was trying to understand the drastic difference in the prices I was getting. After quite a bit of research, I learned that most of the fabricators here in the area were trying to sell me the EXACT same slabs from the EXACT same distributor (and they were fugly, let me tell you!). The guy who quoted me $130sf had what I like to call "zipcodeitis". He learned where I lived and thought he could take me for a couple grand. I GC on all my projects and understand you get what you pay for, but in this case I think I was marked for an easy sale.

We ended up going with the more expensive fabricator who offered the cheaper stone because they've got CNC capabilities. That's another issue for Treb - have you ever heard of a company NOT being able to cut a drainboard in soapstone because they can't figure out how to program the machine?? I signed up with this company because a.) they stock soapstone and I thought they did much more work with it and b.) they had the CNC machine that could cut my drainboard. They said they'd done several in the past, but neglected to mention it was only done on solid surface and with a different machine (of course this didn't come out until after they had my deposit). Now I'm told they might not be able to because they can't figure out the Z axis. I'm happy with the slab and they do great work around town so really it comes down to this stupid machine. I saw a post here once about DIY runnels but the pictures seem to have disappeared. Have you seen anyone do this successfully themselves? Any advice?

I've heard a lot about Florida Joshua, too. Is he still here? I have some questions about sanding the stone myself. The fabricator has it much more polished than I'd like and I know I'm going to have to knock the finish down once they're installed. Any advice about DIY would be much appreciated.

To do the runnels ... you need a wedge template and a router with a bit that can cut the stone.

The template will have slots where the runnels will be, a tiny bit longer then the desired runnel.

You set the router bit depth for as deep as you want the runnels at the sink end + the thickness of your template.

Then you prop the template up like a ramp, highest end away from the sink, higher than the possible router groove. Run the router down the slot towards the sink. The router bit starts not touching the stone and as you move it towards the sink opening it goes down the ramp and the runnel gets deeper.

Uniform shape and pitch with no fancy-pants CNC Z-Axis required!

Whaaaaa?! Did you do that yourself lazygardens?! I'm really impressed - that's gorgeous! It almost looks like tiger's eye. I swear I've seen that pic around on the internet. You're famous!

Thanks for the blow by blow - if it comes to this and I can convince DH to let me take a router to our brand new counter tops I'm definitely going to do it. Would I look for a carbide bit? Is that what cuts soapstone?

A google search is a lot more useful than the search function at the bottom of the page. Here's a few pages!

Here is a link that might be useful: google

Thanks! I'll check it out!