[Rockhounds] Field Trip Report

[Doug Bank]

Kreigh,

Be careful with the walkway. My daughter has a walkway made of many fragments of polished granite kitchen counters, and many people have trouble with it. Part of the problem is the fragments could trip you or make it hard to gauge distance. However, the big problem is that they are slippery. They are much more slippery when wet than most regular flat stones.

Doug


On May 5, 2017, at 10:43 PM, Kreigh Tomaszewski <kreigh at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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