I’m working on my son’s house at the moment (a “benefit” of having retired…) and today we decided to start on the kitchen - stripping out the old units etc to do wall insulation and refit better. After removing tiles I removed the old worktops, so here are a couple of pics of the existing clamps as I was removing them:
In the several kitchens I’ve designed and fitted, two had laminate worktops joined at right angles - the first I did wholly myself, including the inset, part mitre cut needed for the rounded front edges. Tools were a hand circular saw with fine blade, and a jigsaw with laminate blades (teeth pushing down not pulling up), and a straight edge clamped to guide. it worked surprisingly well, especially considering it was first attempt and no template. It had no clamps, but gluing, and with dowels (not biscuits - easier without special tools), and with the worktops screwed firmly to rigidly bound base units worked well (That was mid 1980s, and that point I’d never seen laminate worktops joined that way even in professionally fitted kitchens, let alone have any awareness of the clamps that became ubiquitous). There were three or four tiny chips to the cut edges of the laminate surface, which I covered up with dabs of a suitable colour car touch-up paint.
The next I did, in early 1990s , had three such joints and the laminate supplier had a guy who charged something like £30 for the cuts and clamp routing, which I thought worth it for the work involved - and it was done within a week of ordering. Shortly after I did a kitchen for a family member, with same approach for the worktop.
The two kitchens I’ve done since have had granite worktops, for which I had the suppliers fit, so my son’s kitchen will be the first laminate I’ll have done for years (unfortunately he’s no money left for granite, and we’ve already poured too much money in)
Tougher than laminate, but still quite easy to scratch so take care, ignoring the suppliers if they claim as hard as granite.