The history of human civilization shows us that man and the stone have been inextricably linked since ancient times. Natural stone and rocks have always been part of the material culture of mankind. It was the natural stone that was the material from which man, after some processing, received the much-needed objects and tools.
Today, when the world is different and high technology is everywhere, many people are unaware and even confuse granite with marble. And the difference is very big.
Marble is a richly colored carbonate rock that is much easier to process than granite, but it is more resistant to weathering and lacks that hardness and strength. That is why when used as a building material, it is more suitable for cladding indoors.
Natural granite stone is significantly harder and stronger than marble. It is found in huge quantities on planet Earth and it is unlikely that stocks will ever run out. It is often used as a decorative stone veneer and for processing construction equipment.
Granite rocks are thought to have formed from crystallized magma in the earth’s crust. Its structure is granular and includes the minerals mica, quartz and feldspar, and the physicochemical properties it possesses make it the strongest and even eternal decorative or other building material. Its extremely high resistance to low temperatures and high abrasion resistance make granite an indispensable material that can be said to be eternal and indestructible.
Polished granite can remain shiny and unchanged for centuries and millennia. Therefore, everything that is made of granite is practically eternal. Many monuments and buildings have been built of granite, which have remained and will remain for generations to come.
Granite rocks are colored in different colors, ranging from bluish to pink, and often even red and green. The uniqueness of the color of each stone also makes it very valuable and unique when it is used to make a product or some decoration.
However, the extraction and production of decorative elements or granite products is not easy even with modern construction equipment due to the huge hardness of the rock. Especially in the past, this process required hard work and time, and man-made granite monoliths are a true work of art. However, there is an alternative to the natural stone called manufactured or faux stacked stone, which mimics the real stone and its properties. It has a lot of advantages, including a lot lower price.
While in the past explosives were used for granite extraction, today there are modern construction techniques that allow the extraction to preserve the integrity of the granite blocks. Thus, their additional processing provides many opportunities. With special construction equipment the cutting of granite blocks is carried out, from which slabs of different thickness and rather large sizes are obtained. The blanks made in this way are cut again with construction equipment, which are of various constructions and are equipped with diamond segment disks. Diamond tools are also used for grinding and polishing granite, and the operations have a high and specific cost due to the hardness of the granite itself.
Human experience and history have proven that granite is a rock material that has all three main properties:
Granite hardness
Hardness is a basic identification property of granite. Granite has a granular structure. Hardness is an indicator that depends on the size, location and density of the mineral grains themselves and the adhesion between them
Durability of granite
This indicator depends on the structure and mineral composition of the granite rock and how large the mineral grains are.The smaller they are, the greater the strength of the granite and its durability.The fine-grained granite rocks, in which quartz predominates, are the strongest and even eternal.
Beautiful decoration made of granite
The most important indicator of granite for its use in human life and in construction is its beautiful decorativeness. its beauty, especially river rock granite stone and its colors make it unique, and its decorative qualities are usually determined by specialists. Products made of granite – monuments, building cladding, granite columns, etc., remain for generations to remind that man can create incredible beauty from materials that are eternal and given to him by nature and thus perpetuate his talent of a thinking being.