Page 15 - Demo

Slippery Rock Gazette
August 2024 | 15
Stone Restoration and
Stone Restoration and
Maintenance Corner
Maintenance Corner
Specialize, or Be a “Jack-of-All Hard Surfaces”?
Ibelieve it was Elon (and you know who I mean) who said that we tend to try and optimize processes and procedures to a point where it actually has the opposite effect. In the natural stone, terrazzo, and decorative concrete restoration and main- tenance industry, most of the basic pro- cesses and procedures have been around for thousands of years. These products and procedures have been and continue to be optimized. The big leap was back in the late 1960s with the introduction of the industrial diamond, which has widespread use today in our industry.
We take surfaces that need to be repaired and, through a smoothing and rubbing process, we refinish to like new, or bet- ter than new, in most cases. Stone, and for that matter many hard surfaces, are fin- ished in multiple steps of honing (smooth- ing with abrasives) processes to the desired level of finish. Remember, we basically have 3 types of surface finishes for stone: polished, honed (this is a range of vary- ing smoothness and shine), and textured (meaning rough or three-dimensional).
These procedures are virtually the same for marble, granite, quartz, quartzite, trav- ertine, limestone, slate, terrazzo, decorative concrete, and most all natural stone. All of these materials are cut or cast and then fin- ished to the desired level, whether that be a leathered or antiqued (textured) dimen- sional finish, honed (smooth with a matte to satin shine) finish, or a highly polished (smooth with high light reflectivity) finish.
As I previously stated, these materials are finished in much the same way. However, there are some differences in the tooling and procedure with various materials. In the stone restoration and related services, we typically use diamond abrasives (in both metal-bond & resin-bond), sometimes silicon carbide (sandpaper and bricks), alu- minum oxide (in many polishing powders), tin oxide (a premium polishing abrasive used for granite and most all polishable stone), and a few others.
Now, most contractors usually keep in stock what tools they use the most often. If you’re mostly, or even only, polishing marble countertops, you’re probably going to have plenty of variable-speed hand
Bob Murrell
M3 Technologies
Photos by Bob Murrell
Residential terrazzo–Oh boy! Better be prepared to tackle layers of old carpet glue removal and more, before you can hone and polish terrazzo.
Commercial marble? No problemo! polishers, 5 inch flexible resin diamonds,
Majestic 5X Gold Marble Polishing Powder or Marble Polishing Compound, Tape & Drape, blue tape, red polyvinyl tape, Majestic Low Odor Solvent-Based Sealer, PLP diamond impregnated pads, and generally the tools necessary to hone and polish marble countertops, right?
If you’re grinding, honing, and/or pol- ishing concrete floors, you’re probably going to have planetary floor machines and plenty of metal-bond discs like our popular Magnums (8 segment and 3 seg- ment) series. You’ll also need plenty of resin (either phenolic or epoxy type) to fin- ish out the floor. If you’re doing “surface prep” work, which is coatings removal, you’ll want plenty of 3 segment Magnums for greater down pressure (psi) and a better scraping effect. You can use our Flexible Electroplate Metal-Bond and Premium Flexible Resin diamonds for doing the hand tool work on edges and where nec- essary, which is convenient as both can also be used on most all stone, terrazzo, and concrete.
The bottom line is this: the more differ- ent types of surfaces and markets you work in, the more types of tooling and consum- ables you will need, not to mention the dif- ferent types of equipment needed for these surfaces and applications. If your niche is marble and limestone countertops, you will not necessarily have the equipment or tool- ing on hand to do surface prep on concrete floors.
In one of my recent articles, I discuss how hard it was to remove carpet adhesive, tile thinset, and other coatings from con- crete floors in an apartment building high- rise. The clients wanted a semi-polished and stained floor. This surface prep project was no easy feat, and if I had not already had an HTC 500 machine and some tooling from years past, there is absolutely no way that project could have been completed efficiently, or for that matter, with a profit.
To go purchase that equipment and tool- ing new would have cost over $15K, at least. This doesn’t even take into account the experience needed to run this heavy grind and polish on such a battlefield — and trust me, it was a battle.
Please turn to page 18
So, you want to do concrete, eh? You better stock up on heavy equipment and metal bond diamonds!