The Binary Circumstance

My recent experience with buying granite and my need to decide on what to use for countertops has forced me to do a lot of research into stone as well as other possible countertop materials.

This post is just to share some of what I’ve learned about stone and some of the ideas that I’ve been experimenting with. Here are some links for information on classifications of stone and how it is formed, and the MOH scale for hardness. This site talks about the properties of granite and other stones as they relate to building materials.

Most of the granite that people buy for their kitchens is highly polished. This is done by grinding the granite into the desired shape and then polishing it with progressively finer grit abrasives. Because granite is so hard, much of the cutting, grinding and polishing is usually done with water which keeps the surfaces cool and lowers the amount of dust.

To get that very glassy, high-gloss finish in granite, fabricators use polishing discs with grits ratings as high or higher than 3000.

Cutting granite is not that difficult; I’ve done it with my $90 Home Depot wet tile saw. The problem is polishing the edges so they match the glossy surface of the tiles or slab. Professionals have all the expensive equipment as well as the skill to create edges and bullnoses that are as highly polished as the surface of the tiles or slab. This same effect is very difficult to recreate at home with inexpensive tools.

Here are some sites that sell granite fabricatings tools, diamond polishing pads and kits, tile saws and tools and just about everything else, marble and granite polishing pads, more diamond polishing pads, and more polishing discs.

You’ll notice how often diamond based abrasives are used in granite fabrication. That’s because diamond is the hardest substance known to man and will scratch anything below it on the MOH scale. I also found a lot of Zirconia based sanding discs. Zirconia is a synthetic diamond.

When I’ve been looking at tiles, I seem to be drawn to things like travertine marble. I picked up on tile at a local store yesterday that was very subtle and beautiful and nobody seemed to know what it was. The head bossman said it limestone. The problem is that marble and limetone are more porous than granite and can stain. Therefore tile people don’t recommend them for kitchen counters.

Granite is recommended because it is so hard. But it is also very expensive and as I’ve already noted, it’s hard for the do-it-yourselfer to get a really professional look. While I think it’s very beautiful, I’m not totally sold on the high-gloss look.

I’ve experimented successfully with cutting granite tiles and with using an angle grinder to put a nice edge on the tiles. But I can’t get the shine unless I hire somebody else to do it, which is still a possibility but it will cost a shitload of money. I can’t see dumping thousands into new countertops on 25-year-old cabinets. I was something that’s relatively cheap, very functional, but looks very expensive and stylish.

The guy at the local tile shop said that you need to polish granite to bring out all the colors. It is certainly true that polishing brings out the colors but I’ve found other ways to do it. The highly reflective surface can even hide the colors and all you will see is the reflection of a window or light from someplace else in the room.

I experimented with a sample granite tile that I bought for $4 at Home Depot. I noticed that when I put water on the unpolished surface it had all the color of the polished side without the high gloss. But water dries and the stone goes back to its natural unpolished color.

So I tried polyurethane and it brought out lots of color. Then I thought back to my furniture building days and remembered using oils like linseed and tung oil to finish wood. Oil brings out the natural colors in wood and I wondered if it would do the same for stone. So I applied some vegetable oil.

This is the polished side of the tile. Notice the reflection of the flash.

Here is the back side with my tests. The lower left is untreated, the lower right is polyurethane and the top is vegetable oil. (I would never use vegetable oil as a final solution because it would become rancid over time and evaporate. I just wanted to see how oil affected the stone’s colors.)

Oil brings out all the colors of the polished side but without the gloss. I immediately thought that Tung Oil would be the oil to use because it is a penetrating resin finish. I used it a lot when I used to build furniture like this rocking chair. [I built the chair more than 30 years ago. I also did the paintings on the wall in 1999.]

Tung oil, which comes from the tung oil tree, soaks into wood and gets hard. So why wouldn’t it work for stone? Turns out it has been used on stone in China for centuries.

Tung oil is a finishing product that provides a tough, flexible and highly water-resistant coating. Although it is relatively new to the Western world, tung oil has been known for centuries to the Chinese, and until this century China was the main source of the oil. It comes from the seed of the tung trees(Aleurites fordii and Aleurites montana), deciduous trees which are very susceptible to frost damage. This vulnerability has restricted the cultivation of tung trees to China and South America. An attempt to introduce the trees in the warner southern United State in the 1920’s was not successful, due to the unfavorable climate.
Tung oil received wide application in China: in the building trades as a treatment for both stone and wooden structures; in marine trades as a preservative and water repellent on wooden boats. It is said to have been introduced to the West by Marco Polo. From the 13th to the 19th century tung oil had only limited use in the West. In the 19th century it was adopted by the paint companies to become a major component in paints and varnishing. More recently, tung oil has gained favor over linseed oil in many instances for furniture finishing, because it is faster drying and does not darken as much with age.

It also turns out that it’s used in some sealers for stone.
So how’s that for reinventing the wheel? Why don’t these tile people tell me this stuff?

If I can find an unpolished granite that looks really hot when it’s sealed, that will be my choice for countertops.

So there you have it. You learn something new every day.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 1:00 am and is filed under Product Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a reply. Pinging is currently not allowed.