[Rockhounds] Field Trip Report

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Today the Indian Mounds and Tulip City rock clubs took a joint field trip
to Rock Solid Granite, a fabricator of stone countertops. The owner, Rich,
gave us a tour of the fabrication shop. About ten years ago he gave up his
CNC machine because it was too expensive, and returned to the more
traditional methods for working stone.

He starts by glueing wood slats together to make a pattern for the
countertop to be cut. This is then laid out on the large stone slab and
adjusted for optimal pattern and to avoid bad spots in the stone, and is
then clamped down.

Then he uses a large overhead saw on an x/y mount over a turntable that can
support a full 8 x 12 foot slab to cut to pattern. Sink cutouts are done
with a diamond router that actually floats on the stone surface from its
cooling water feed, or by cutting undersize with the saw, and manually
grinding to full size.

Edges are finished with a router, or with hand finishing tools. He also has
a nibbling tool in case a rough edge is desired.

Material handling is an issue. A fork lift with a gravity clamp can lift
and move an entire slab. Smaller pieces can be moved with a vacuum handler
that uses suction pads to grip the surface of the stone.

He did a demo of his giant saw by cutting a 6x6x12 rock in half that one of
the club members had brought along. He ran it slow, because he was not sure
of the rock composition, and it only took about a minute.

All his scrap, and the sink cutouts, go into a scrap pile out back that he
periodically has to pay to haul away (it goes to a stone crusher to be used
for construction aggregate to make roads). Stone countertops are made from
all kinds of granites, marbles, basalts, and talc to labradorite.

Yes, it really was a field trip. We got to take as much of the scrap pile
as we wanted. I took more than a dozen slabs that were more than a foot
square, all different, and will have a new paved path in my garden. And a
couple smaller pieces are going to get slabbed up for some lapidary
projects.

When the remaining quarries, gravel pits, and mines, no longer let you in,
sometimes you have to get creative. We saved Rich a lot of money today by
hauling away much of his scrap pile, and he gave us an interesting hour of
learning, and a lot of interesting specimens. This was a win/win trip that
I expect we will do again.

Kreigh