Page 24 - Demo

24|November 2019
Know Your Minerals
A Handy Guide to the Ingredients of Your Favorite Natural Stone
Slippery rock Gazette
Garnet’s dark pink color and round crystal shape make it easy to recognize.
in River White, Colonial White, Dallas White, and St. Cecilia, among others.
Superpower: People who like garnet are above average at math. Unfortunately, simply owning a garnetiferous stone will not, in and of itself, improve your math skills.
Join us next month for Part 2 of Know your Minerals.
Karin Kirk is a geologist and science educator with over 20 years of experience and brings a different perspective to the stone industry. Karin is a regular con- tributor to usenaturalstone.com and the Slippery Rock Gazette. Contact her at karinkirk@gmail. com .
All feldspar, all the time! This stone is 100% feldspar, arranged in a textbook-perfect example of ‘interlocking’ texture that shows how the crystals have grown tightly into each other. The different shades of grey are caused by the different orientations of the crys- tals, so they reflect light in different directions. This is leathered Antique Brown, which a geologist would call ‘anorthosite,’ and I would call ‘fabulous.’
Continued from page 10
Garnet
Garnet is January’s birthstone, and it’s a beautiful mineral. Garnet is dark-raspberry pink, maroon, or maroonish-brown.
Identifying features:
• The color is usually a total giveaway.
• The crystal shape is usually round-ish. It often occurs in specks.
• Garnet crystals have a glassy luster, and when viewed on the edge of a slab or in an un-cut rock, they are brilliantly sparkly.
Properties:
Garnet is 6.5 to 7.5 on Mohs scale and is often used as an abrasive. Large, translucent crystals of garnet are used for gemstones.
Examples: Garnet is not a major ingredient in any stone, but its recognizable crystals are
These garnets come to life in the sunshine of the slab yard.
The white mineral is quartz and the black is biotite mica.
Weha Announces New Tooling for Stone Pros
Puma 1– 3/8 Inch T-Segment Core Bit
The Weha Puma 1-3/8- inch T-Segment core bit is designed with side diamond segments for fast cutting of granite, quartz, marble, and even quartzite.
Made with a T-segment that drops into the steel body, this strong design allows the Puma Core Bit to take even greater abuse while drilling by hand into stone. This greatly reduces the likelihood of a segment breaking off when “wobbling” the core bit during the hand-drilling process.
The Weha Puma T-Segment has a full drilling depth of 2-3/4 inches even when the segment is worn completely down. This gives plenty of drilling depth for all countertop applica- tions, but short enough to offer solid control when drilling. The Puma -Segment core bit has vacuum brazed diamonds on the outside core to help with the hand-drilling process. It also helps if you need to make the hole just a little bigger, and to clean up the hole as well. The four turbo-style diamond segments act like a typi- cal turbo diamond blade by allow- ing air and water (when run wet) to get in the segment while drill- ing, as well as channel the dust out to help cut and core faster.
core bit is a very affordable core bit that offers outstanding performance.
Specifications:
Diameter: 1- 3/8 inches
Thread: 5/8”-11
Total length: 4 inches
Drilling depth: min 2 3⁄4 inches – max 3 inches, when bit is new. Max RPMS: 6500
Use: Dry or Wet Recommended Materials: Granite, Quartz, Quartzite, Marble, Engineered Stone
For more information see www. wehausa.com or contact their authorized distributor, Braxton- Bragg. See the related story on page 26.
The Puma T-Segment diamond