Hi Warren: Your questions are very important to those people who work stone. In fact, I have been meaning to write the list to share with you some wonderful new (to me) techniques and equipment to plane, smooth and polish stone. While investigating the equipment used to prepare marble and terrazo floors I found out that I have been preparing my stone in the hardest way possible, with a palm sander and sandpaper.
Professional stone workers, I found out, use an angle grinder fitted with diamond Grinding Cup Wheels to plane any kind of stone. This tool also can round off (bull nose) sharp stone edges. After planeing, the stone surface can be made even smoother by using diamond disks of various grits with the grinder. A variable speed grinder is used at slow speed for this final polishing, whereas high speeds are used for planeing. I can now do in one hour what used to take me a week!!! To cut stone, you should use diamond disks (wet or dry) with a tile cutter. A tile cutter looks and functions like a miniature carpenter's rotary skill saw. You can see pictures of diamond grinding cup wheels and blades at: <http://www.mytoolstore.com> However, I buy my equipment from Regent Stone Products because they have better prices, more equipment, including tile cutters and variable speed grinders, and a very helpful staff. Ask them for a free catalogue. They don't have a website, but you can call: 1-800-624-8210. Their address is: Regent Products Incorporated, 2656 Quality Court, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23454. (Scott Schuster is the customer rep. who helped me ) Good Luck! John Hi John, > >One thing I have wondered about was how do you "plane" a rock surface to a >smooth, flat surface? Do you use a belt "sander" of some type? or do you use a >concrete saw blade to make a cut? - which would be limited to less than the >radius of the blade. Do you have a stone cutter that you farm this out to before >your start? > >(I am going to be out your way in Mesa next month to see my new baby grandson.) > >Just curious, > >Warren Thom > > > >
