Stone and Rock Types
A variety of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks are used as structural and decorative dimension stone. These rock types are more commonly known as granite, limestone, marble, travertine, quartz-based stone (sandstone, quartzite) and slate. Other varieties of dimension stone that are normally considered to be special minor types include alabaster (massive gypsum), soapstone (massive talc), serpentine and various products fashid from natural stone.
A variety of finishes can be applied to dimension stone to achieve diverse architectural and aesthetic effects. These finishes include, but are not limited to, the following. A polished finish gives the surface a high luster and strong reflection of incident light (almost mirror-like). A honed finish provides a smooth, satin-like ("eggshell"), nonreflective surface. More textured finishes include bush-hammered, sandblasted, and thermal. A bush-hammered finish, similar to a houndstooth pattern, creates a rough, but uniformly patterned surface with impact tools varying in coarseness. A sandblasted surface provides an irregular pitted surface by impacting sand or metal particles at high velocity against a stone surface. A thermal (or flamed) finish produces a textured, nonreflective surface with only a few reflections from cleavage faces, by applying a high-temperature flame. This finish may change the natural color of the stone depending on mineralogical composition, particularly with stones containing higher levels of iron.
The most easily accessible general (non-graphic) references are the latest Minerals Yearbook Chapter (production and foreign trade, with statistics), and the latest (Issue 31) Dimension Stone Advocate News (new "building green" developments and demand statistics); see below. The most comprehensive, graphic references are Natural Stone Database by Abraxas Verlag (www.natural-stone-database.com), "Dimension Stones of the World, Volumes I & II" (Marble Institute of America) and "Natural Stones Worldwide CD" (Abraxas Verlag GmbH).
Read more about this topic: Dimension Stone
Famous quotes containing the words stone and, stone, rock and/or types:
“O to break loose, like the chinook
salmon jumping and falling back,
nosing up to the impossible
stone and bone-crushing waterfall—”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 3:2-3.
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)