Page 23 - Demo

Slippery rock Gazette September 2019|23
let us do the
heavy lifting
Pro-Lift Automatic
• Compact. Stable. Solid.
• Wireless remote for ease of use
• 1,000lb (450kg) capacity
Reduce risk of injury and safely transport your priceless products utilizing less people. Allows you to tilt material at ANY height between 8” and 48” from the ground. Fits inside A-frame, truck, or van and can be used for stone, commercial doors and wood products.
(530) 748-2260
customerservice@omnicubed.com | omnicubed.com
Welcome to the Tinfoil Hat Society
The Behney House Hotel in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, was evacuated after police responded to a reported bomb threat there on June 23, reported WPMT.
When officers arrived, they found David Oxenreider, 28, who lives at the hotel, and the homemade bomb he claimed to have made next to a dumpster outside the building. Oxenreider told po- lice he made the bomb to get their attention because he was frustrated that his attempts to warn officials about aliens hadn’t been taken seriously. According to the criminal complaint, Oxenreider said he encountered a UFO and aliens in 2014, who told him “humans need to start being good people, or else they were going to destroy the Earth with a nuclear laser beam.” Police disarmed the device and ar- rested Mr. Oxenreider.
Do Engineered Countertops Stain?
Continued from page 16
The worst effect was on Silestone Cygnus, so I repeated the test with the scouring pad and water only to try to see if it was the pad or the detergent that was caus- ing the problem. The pad caused very slight hazing of the finish, but less than with the Soft Scrub.
A kitchen sponge and Soft Scrub mostly had no ef- fect, except on one brand. Soft Scrub uses calcium carbonate as its abrasive material, which has a Mohs hardness of 3. Calcium carbonate is also known as calcite, which is the mineral that makes up limestone, marble, travertine, and onyx. Soft Scrub is well named, be- cause it is indeed softer than other abrasive cleaners. The combina- tion of Soft Scrub and the scrubby side of a Scotch-Brite non-scratch kitchen sponge did not damage most of the quartz samples I tested. The one exception was Silestone Merope, which was visibly dulled after scrubbing for 30 seconds with Soft Scrub and the sponge.
The Bottom Line
Engineered quartz surfaces are made of two basic things: particles of mineral quartz and resin binders. The mineral components of manu- factured quartz slabs are hard and resistant to damage from abrasives. But the resin binders are much softer, and as much as 25 percent or more of the surface area of an engineered quartz slab is made of resin, not mineral quartz. (For more details on this, see my pre- vious quartz article.) When you look closely at how an abrasive cleaner damages a manufactured quartz surface, you can see that the resin gets scoured away, while the mineral grains are left intact. The result is an uneven and dull finish. An important takeaway is that even though the majority of an engineered quartz surface is made up of minerals, it’s the fillers and binders in between the minerals that are likely to be less durable over time.
Join us Next Month for Part 3:
Removing Stains from Quartz Countertops
A Scotch-Brite abrasive hand pad damaged every sample, and is much too aggressive to use on any countertop. The left side of this sample was scrubbed, and is clearly damaged. Note how the quartz particles are unaffected while the filler around them is abraded. This illustrates the hardness difference between the mineral quartz grains and polyester resin filler.
Damaged finish from kitchen sponge and Bar Keeper’s Friend (rough patch, left center) on this Cambria Templeton sample.