Slate tables.

Sir,

Diamond blade on angle grinder. There was a guy here who said you can work the edgces with a router, treating it like HARD wood, but I an't tried this.

Rick

A router can be used ( carefully ) to produce a lovely bevel or curved edge on slate.

A friend of mine is very proud of his routed slate worktop which exactly matches the profile of his wooden worktop elsewhere in the kitchen.

Try it on some scrap to see how you get on.

It all depends on your slate.

Some Welsh stuff will work beautifully (look at old 1920's electrical panels). Lakeland slate might take the finish, but it's hard enough to destroy most tooling. Other slates, especially recycled roofing slates, will just collapse into shards when you look at them.

The best slate I've found for machining was old stuff used for cold water tanks (1900's Liverpool this wasn't uncommon - lead joints to seal them). It even made it worth the trouble of getting the slabs out of the roofspace without ust breaking them in situ.