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View Full Version : People take Belinda's job for granite



Brian Kent
08-19-2011, 9:58 AM
Belinda,

I thought about your granite career when I saw a craigslist ad for a 6-foot lathe for marble, tile and granite.

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/esd/tls/2543020097.html

I started thinking about that wonderful and horrendously difficult work of getting stone out of a quarry and through the process, onto my kitchen counter.

Do you have any pics or videos that show some of the quarry, cutting, grinding, shaping processes?

Thanks. If anybody else has pics or vids, join in. I just want to see how that is done.

Brian Kent

Dan Hintz
08-19-2011, 10:52 AM
No pics/videos at hand, but I have a general idea how it is done. In a nutshell, they drill deep holes in the bed, pack a bit of blasting material, then stand back while pressing the button. Huge blocks are separated from the quarry this way. These blocks are placed onto the bed of a diamond cable saw, which slices the block into the rough slabs seen at the warehouses (the faces are generally polished at this point, too). Once you select a slab, they cut to desired sizes, polish everything, then install.

Michael Weber
08-19-2011, 11:12 AM
Over the year This Old House has made a number of trips to quarries. The scale of the equipment and material is pretty impressive and the cable saws are awesome. Makes you appreciate how they used to do it in the past with hammers and wedges. We are decended from giants.

Belinda Barfield
08-19-2011, 2:07 PM
This is a great piece of video on two counts, Brian. It was sent to me by a fellow Creeker. The video is about tombstones for the military but it shows the process from quarry to end product. Regardless of the end product the process is pretty much the same. Drill, blast, cut, slice, face polish, cut to size/shape, and polish the edges. There's nothing pretty about stone work (except the end product), it's messy.

Elberton, Georgia produces a lot of the granite you see in goverment buildings and monuments. It is also famous for the Georgia Guidestones (in case you need something to ponder today).

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7367662n

Don Orr
08-19-2011, 2:13 PM
There is a segment on one of the "How It's Made" type shows I believe on the Science Channel about quarrying stone for homes. I found it quite interesting.

This is about soapstone but I imagine granite is very similar.
http://science.discovery.com/videos/how-its-made-mini-episodes-soapstone-products.html

Belinda Barfield
08-19-2011, 2:25 PM
Don, the beauty of Soapstone is that it can be worked with essentially the same tools you use for woodworking - no diamond tooling required.

Working in the world of natural stone is pretty interesting. We have fabricated granite, marble, quartzite, travertine, limestone, and onyx. Onyx slabs are cut from stalactites and stalagmites. We haven't had any takers yet, but I have a 12 x 12 sample of one of the most unusual products I've seen today - petrified wood. The slabs are quite expensive.

Mike Davis NC
08-19-2011, 4:28 PM
My great uncle worked at Stone Mt. Ga in the rock quarry before it became a tourist attraction.

My wife's dad worked in the quarries at Elberton until he got lung cancer.

I live near Mt. Airy stone quarry, one of the largest open face quarries in the world.

and I don't have one scrap of film to show how it is done...

Jeff Nicol
08-19-2011, 7:28 PM
Belinda, Where did the petrified wood come from? When I was young we moved to WI from Colorado and when we finally settled into a house my parents bought in 1969 there was a chunk of petrified wood that was used to keep a door open on an old shed. It was about 20" long and about 7" in diameter, I wanted to cut it into slabs when I was a kid but never had the tools to do it. My Dad kept it for about 20 years and finally when he downsized and moved into town it got sold in the auction. I seem to remember it went for about $50, I sure wish I had it now, I have a slabbing saw and a bunch of diamond buffing and cabbing wheels so I could have done some fun things with it!

If I did not like woodturning and fabricating tools and such I may have went into geology, but I was not cut out for College when I graduated from highschool, so I joined the military.

Have a great weekend,

Jeff

Brian Kent
08-19-2011, 7:34 PM
OK, I am stunned by the diamond cable saw. What a genius tool. I was trying to imagine what kind of saw could cut through a giant block. Wow.

Belinda Barfield
08-20-2011, 7:29 AM
Jeff, I don't recall where the wood came from but I believe it was Arizona. I'll check Monday when I'm back in the office. There are several companies that use small pieces and put them together, like a mosaic, but this company used large cross cut pieces. I'll snap a photo of the sample and post it if anyone is interested. There are a numer of companies on the internet that sell small pieces for cab work. I've been trying for a couple of years to find someone to do some cab work for me, as I make jewelery. We always have small pieces of stone sitting around. I found one guy in Florida but his work wasn't the quality I was looking for. Our deal was 50/50, I provided the stone, he cut and polished the cabs, I got half, he kept half.

Belinda Barfield
08-20-2011, 7:31 AM
OK, I am stunned by the diamond cable saw. What a genius tool. I was trying to imagine what kind of saw could cut through a giant block. Wow.

Interestingly enough, before we met and opened a business together my SO worked for a company doing specialized concrete cutting. Their company basically developed the large scale diamond wire saw cutting system for cutting expansion joints in dams and other large structures.