lonelytraveller wrote:

On Feb 25, 6:53*pm, Bruce wrote:
The stone panels are mostly produced in Italy and Norway. *Large stone
blocks are very carefully quarried so they come out square. *Then the
blocks - usually either granite or marble - are precision sawn using
large diameter diamond-tipped circular saws. *The thickness is
typically a couple of centimetres, but the finished job often looks as
though it is made of solid granite or marble that is tens of
centimetres thick.

So its is actual stone, just very thin?


Yes, that's exactly what it is. The diamond tipped circular saws are
huge and cut extremely accurately. After cutting, the stone panels
are polished on one side and the edges. The thinnest panels I have
seen were 10mm thick, but there may be thinner ones - they make
granite and marble tiles that are probably thinner.

My interest in the subject came from buying tens of thousands of
tonnes of granite waste from the Norwegian and Swedish stone quarries
to be used in sea defence works. The wastage is tremendous; the
quarry I dealt with most only managed to turn 7% of its output into
monumental stone, so 93% went to waste. They originally offered the
waste for free, so all we had to do was send barges to collect it, but
they subsequently got very organised and sorted it into weight bands,
and charged for it. But it was still comparatively cheap as all they
wanted to do was get rid of it so their quarries weren't choked with
waste stone.


Clever. So when did they start using this instead of those blue mdf
walls? Will they be doing this in future, when they have building
works (at bond street, for example, or TCR) ?


I have no idea, sorry.