Machinery suppliers National Masonry in Bishop Auckland say a Sink Hole Saver to protect kitchen worktops during transportation and installation has become an instant best seller for them.

Once the hole for a sink has been cut a worktop becomes vulnerable to snapping, but the aluminium Sink Hole Saver cramps on to either side of the sink hole to protect it. When installing the worktop, a suction cup version takes over.

The cramp version Sink Hole Savers come in 1.2m, 1.8m and 2.4m lengths that sell for £366, £527 and £600, respectively. The suction cup versions in the same lengths sell for £553, £661 and £707 a pair.

National Masonry say the Savers pay for themselves with just one saved worktop.

National Masonry are also offering cramps to protect awkward, \'L\' and \'U\' shaped worktops and at the same time are introducing Lam-Clamps for glueing together built-up edges.

Prices start at £230 for a pack of 10, 25mm long Lam-Clamps and go up to £245 each for 1.8m lengths.

These latest additions to the National Masonry range join the StoneLux granite and quartz composite repair kits that National Masonry started selling 18 months ago. StoneLux uses a UV light-setting product developed for dentistry to create an invisible repair to chips and scratches on worktops on site in 10 minutes. National Masonry say they have sold 230 of the kits.

In Austria, where StoneLux was developed and is made by Invicon, the product was used recently to repair a headstone in Verde San Francisco granite from Brazil that had had the wrong name carved into it - \'Irma\' instead of \'Ludmilla\'.

Conventionally, putting the mistake right would have involved sending the headstone back to the memorial manufacturer in France for the surface to be ground back 8mm and the whole inscription re-carved.

A similar repair was made on another piece of stone and shown to the customer before the repair was attempted on the headstone. The customer gave their approval for the memorial to be repaired in this way.

The repair was made and the stone ready for the new inscription to be added in two hours, instead of the weeks it would have taken for a conventional repair. The correct name, Ludmilla, was then carved over the repair.