Natural stone production
Selling natural stone
In our earlier blog posts we wrote a lot about which natural stone is most popular and suitable for your home. We also wrote about the types and their features. This time, a few words about how natural stone is produced and extracted, the stone that decorates your home now or will in the future.
Producing natural stone is a special skill that calls for knowledge and experience from many different fields. It brings together trade, technology, inspiration and industry. The term “natural stone” refers to products taken from the earth, products that have been used for thousands of years as building and decorative materials. To name just a few: granite, marble, travertine, limestone, quartzite, rustic stone and many others.
Natural stone is much more than ordinary stone. It is carefully selected, and its properties give it an extremely long life. In practice it is almost indestructible. It is a one-of-a-kind material in many colours and structures. It is hard, almost impossible, to find two identical pieces, because it formed in nature through many processes and many factors shaped it. Natural stone brings warmth, colour and a homely feel, and that is why it is so popular in homes.
Production
Natural stone is part of human culture, as people have used it as a natural material since the very beginning. Natural stone is extracted in quarries, and there are three types of quarrying:
u2013 Hillside quarry (open quarry cut into a slope)
u2013 Pit quarry (open quarry, stone extracted from depth)
u2013 Underground quarry (made up of underground tunnels)
In the past, natural stone was dug out of quarries by hand, using traditional methods of breaking stone: breaking by hand, breaking by drilling, and breaking with explosives and fire. Today, with modern technology, stone blocks are cut with a steel spiral wire.
This method is simpler and faster, and it has another advantage: the sawn surface is flat and clean, so it is better suited for further use. Natural stone extracted this way can come in very different sizes and weights, up to several thousand kilograms. Further processes then reduce or cut it to set sizes (smaller and thinner pieces) ready for transport and sale.
Finishing
Stonemasonry is mainly about working or cutting massive blocks into smaller workpieces and then into finished products. Blocks are cut into workshop pieces or slabs. Standard slab thicknesses are 2, 3 and 4 cm (regular slabs) and 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 15 cm (solid slabs). Blocks are mostly cut with gang saws, and more recently also with diamond wire saws. Modern technology for cutting blocks into slabs is based on old methods, and its biggest advance has been faster cutting. Solid blocks are then shaped, profiled and surface finished.
Modern technology allows stone to be worked by machine. Straight lines are cut with bridge saws and more complex curved lines with CNC machines. Edges are honed and polished on edge polishing machines, using a line of synthetic abrasives of different grits on a conveyor belt. Edges can be finished in different ways: straight with a classic chamfer, rounded or half-rounded. Line technology has also changed how slab surfaces are finished. Granite slabs can be polished, honed, flamed, brushed and sandblasted.
Transporting and selling natural stone
Once the natural stone blocks have been properly shaped, they are ready to go to the nearest factory or shop. If they are going to the international market, strict quality standards apply. The natural stone must be flawless, which means it must have no cracks that could grow larger during processing. To be commercially available, the stone blocks must be uniform, with the same colour and structure and no stained surfaces.
Of course, natural stone usually contains cracks and all kinds of flaws. So it is no surprise that only a small share of all the natural stone extracted meets the required market standard. As a rule, only five to twenty per cent of the extracted natural stone goes on sale, although in some parts of Europe there are special cases with much higher sales volumes. Because of the high standards natural stone has to meet before it can be sold, it is still, after thousands of years, one of the most popular materials people use to build and decorate their homes and living spaces.
Once these processes are complete, the stone is ready for sale. Its uses are many and reliable.
You are welcome to visit our showroom in Hoče, to see all types of natural stone in person and discover their qualities for yourself.