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Stone
usually means marble or granite, but it can include many differnet
slab-style stones like onyx and slate, as well as semi-precious and
precious stone, imitation stone, stone veneer, and composite stone.
When we work with stone, we often contract out the standard
stone work to large stone suppliers, then bring the stone blanks into
our shop to refine both the finish and precision. This is important
when we're incorporating stone into a piece with other non-forgiving
materials like glass or metal because the interface between these
different materials must be very accurately machined, and bushed with
flexible busings (like felt, rubber, or plastic) to allow for mutual
expansion and contraction without the finished piece rattling or
breaking sometime in the future. The engineering of a piece that
incorporates these different types of materials has to be addressed
very carefully.
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Below are some images of stone work that we've built.
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This piece is a good example of precision work involving stone, glass,
and metal. The glass box is mortised into a groove in the 5" thick
piece of black slate head-piece, which is held up by a bronze rod
drilled through the stone with a bushed bolt capping them together. The
bronze hinges are drilled through the glass door which swings clear of
the unit yet close with a soft impact.
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This is a static piece without moving parts, but shows the precision
alliance between red marble, black slate, and glass. The two stones
glue well together with one type of adhesive, the glass to the red
marble with another type of adhesive, and the face piece of glass to
the side piece of glass with yet another adhesive. All these interfaces
must be strong adhesive but flexible enough to allow differences in
behavior of the materials.
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