On the Surface
GRANITE OR QUARTZ … WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Yorkshire based fabricator and BiKBBI Installations Standards Partner Sheridan is an expert in work surfaces and materials. Recently, the company’s entire one hundred strong field installation teams became members of the institute. This issue brings you the first of a series of informative features that will bring you completely up to speed with all you need to know about worksurfaces
This is a golden era for anyone specifying worktops as there are so many options to choose from. Designers now have an abundance of possibilities, ranging in cost from laminates to Sintered Stone and Ceramics. Here, we look at 2 of the most popular solid surface options currently available; Granite and Quartz. Both offer a multitude of colours and designs and are equally at home in either traditional or contemporary designs. Similar in appearance, Quartz and Granite are both very popular materials for use as worksurfaces. Slabs are manufactured into worktops by using the same manufacturing processes, utilising both machinery and traditional hand skills. They also have similar performance characteristics except in three specific areas. 1. Granite is a completely natural coarsegrained igneous rock with a crystalline structure formed from slowly cooling volcanic magma under extreme pressure deep in the earth’s crust. The wildly differing appearance of many Granites is due to differences in the size and composition of its crystalline structure, varying from the deepest almost pure black to something with the appearance of the bed of a winding stream or river complete with stones, weed, mud and sand.
Black veined
2. Quartz is man-made from 93% quartz crystals, crushed glass and/or mirror (in some colours) and 7% resin to bond it into a whole. The slabs are polished in the same way as granite by using abrasive polishing wheels (similar to polishing gem stones), with
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