Black Limestone

[Mikey P]

House manager insists its granite..

@Cameron DeMille what the trick with this stuff?

 

[srosen]

That looks like black absolute honed-it has a color enhancer on it-thats whats etching and degrading.
You can use a honing powder from 150g to a 280g range to remove all the residues of the enhancer.
Then give your client an option to color enhance or leave natural.
We do a lot of black ab here in the city-sometimes busy kitchens are better left natural.
If you give the client sound cleaning advice they will do well with honed black ab.

 

[Mikey P]

The grain structure sure didn't look like Absolute.

Never seen the sort of "etch" damage one one either...It's twenty plus years old so I doubt it's been died.

The house keeper says she "oils" it frequently till try and hude the stains/etching or color loss if you're correct, with no success

 

[Cameron DeMille]

this is a version on BA they sell on the market, but it is not the original Indian Premium Black. This is a version they dye to achieve the black color and it etches fairly easily. So when you successfully remove the etch marks and restore the polish, you will often be left with a dark gray color instead of the deep black. The larger white speckles is what gives it away to being the cheaper version. This stuff is a nuisance and the only way to be sure it turns out evenly IMO is to cut the entire thing down and bring it to a honed finish, then use an enhancer.

You can also re-dye it with Tenax Uniblack or Tepox V, but there is no guarantee that it will be even and not splotchy

 

[Mikey P]

Twenty years ago this was an issue?

 

[Cameron DeMille]

It's possible, easily 10-15 years ago.

 

[Mikey P]

And in a $14,000,000,00 home?

 

[Cameron DeMille]

easily. I regularly do/did work in a $40 Million home and the stone is dogshit, along with the original work. We repaired a small fraction of the pool coping. Not the deck, just the coping. Replaced 25% of what we were doing and repaired 75% of it. The total job covered about 1/3 of the overall coping at the hose, maybe less. $75K job.

They get talked into shit by their designers, or someone will try and pull a fast one and buy cheaper material than on the contract to pocket the difference.

 

[Old Coastie]

That actually is common. The biggest contractor in a nearby city regularly downgrades from spec and shortchanges his subs. He also has ruined subs who sued. It is a way of life with him; the only guy who beat him was an old stone mason who actually offered to kill him dead if he didn't write a check then and there.

Sometimes it pays to not care.

 

[Pioneer Floorcare]

That actually is common. The biggest contractor in a nearby city regularly downgrades from spec and shortchanges his subs. He also has ruined subs who sued. It is a way of life with him; the only guy who beat him was an old stone mason who actually offered to kill him dead if he didn't write a check then and there.

Sometimes it pays to not care.

In two and a half years in business for myself and eight years for a previous employer I have never had an unpaid invoice

 

[srosen]

Yeah we have had a few of those dyed slabs. The dye etches .
You can use an acidic compound(5x or MB12) to pull the dye off in some cases and just color enhance.
Or like cam said cut it down-color enhance.

 

[Mikey P]

How deep does the dye go, typically?

 

[Cameron DeMille]

BA is incredibly dense, so not far. A fraction of a mm I would suspect. You can redye it with Tenax Uniblack 1, or Tenax Tepoxy V. Uniblack 1 will need to be periodically maintained with Uniblack 2. Tepox V is the stronger, resin based dye. They say to mix with Ager, but DO NOT do that. It coagulates.

 

[Old Coastie]

Good stuff.

 

[Mikey P]

How much would you charge to come up to SF to do this with us?

 

[Cameron DeMille]

hmm...depends on the time. I have a lot of stuff going on right now. I'll send you an email, though I don't think it would be necessary. I can walk you through it over the phone. It's not as technical as it sounds.

 

[Mikey P]

Early March if they go for it..

Other issues there as well to deal with.

 

[Bee Busy]

Here's how these come out looking Mike. This job was a referal from Stu several years ago (Thanks Stu!). I honed with 200 and 400 honing powder and enhanced with STT CE

 

[Cameron DeMille]

Nice Bill

 

[Mikey P]

impressive..


Had no idea you could remove the die that "easy"..

 

[Bee Busy]

I can't take all the credit on that one, the customer was a Brain Surgeon at UC Davis and he demanded that I took a similar slab (4x4) and tapered off 6 different sealers to determine the best as he poured booze and milk to test....so I was really under the gun LOL... Stu guided me through it

 

[Mikey P]

Which sealer won?

Actually I didnt think Absolute needed sealing..

 

[Bee Busy]

STT CE won over over Aqua Mix Gold, Stone Pro Ultimate Pro and some others I cant remember...I think the MB-22 is similar to the STT CE? Stu or Cameron could chime in on this

 

[Mikey P]

Stu who?

 

[Bee Busy]

Stu the owner of MB Stone

 

[Cameron DeMille]

Stu Rosen is the owner of MB Stone Care, he makes all the polishes and cleaners and stuff. He's incredibly knowledgeable, but works himself to death, so he's not online as much.

STT CE is a really good sealer. STT (Surface Treatment Technologies) no longer exists, but you can get the same stuff under the MB-21 label, Stu acquired the formula from the owner of STT, who has since passed away. It is an odor free color enhancer with very good sealing capabilities. It also is much more smudge resistant than other enhancers. CEX 100 is very similar .

We have a process for honed black absolute that involves MB-21 or CEX 100 and Wipe n Seal. Then it gets maintained with our Ultimate spray polish. Honed black absolute is notorious for smudging.

The dye comes out easily because of how dense BA is, it never really goes very far in to begin with.