Marble Polishing
Marble is a very desirable natural stone that conveys a premium feel to any building.
Although a very hard material, daily use will eventually take its toll and will need to be restored to bring back its natural beauty.
That is where we come in; we have many years of maintenance experience and can make your stone look as great as it can be using multi-skilled stages.
Marble Polishing Methods
There are a few basic methods used today to create a shine on natural stone floors including buffing with Marble polishing powders and compounds, grinding with diamond abrasives and crystallization.
Each method may not be effective on all stone types and the use of more than one may be necessary.
Stains removal: We use different methods between diamond spray pads and poultice to remove food, drink or rust stains.
Cracks and holes repair: We fill cracks and holes with epoxy resin with matching colour and then we sand it down and re-polish to match the stone.
Grout clean: We clean each grout line with specially designed grout brush and suitable grout cleaning solution.
Sealing: We always use solvent sealer on marble tiles. It penetrates tile while leaving the surface looking natural.
Polishing Powders: Fine grains of aluminium or tin oxide abrasive powder that are buffed or rubbed on the surface of the stone to create the shine.
This process is actually the same as sanding with diamonds except that the powder is a much finer abrasive. This process is most often augmented by the addition of oxalic acid or oxalate to create a reaction similar to crystallization.
The powder is put on the surface and wet with water to make a paste or slurry that is buffed into the stone with 175 rpm weighted floor machine and a hogs hair or white pad.
Grinding with Diamond Abrasives: Done by grinding the surface of the stone with various grits of industrial grade diamonds that are usual in three to four inch diameter pads or discs. Three to six discs are placed on the bottom of a floor machine drive plate and held on with Velcro and sand the stone surface with the diamonds to remove scratches. The process is repeated with finer grits of diamond until a mechanical shine is achieved.
Crystallization: A process in which a chemical called fluorosilicate is sprayed on to the stone buffed in with steel wool pads causing new, glassy like, crystals to be formed on the surface. A standard 175 rpm floor machine with a special heavy drive plate is used to create the heat and friction needed to form and polish the crystals.
HOW TO POLISH MARBLE FLOOR STEP BY STEP:
1. Vacuum, cleaning, striping the floor from any dirt, grease, old wax or polish then vacuum and mop the floor now the marble is ready for grinding process.
2. Grinding process by using metallic diamond discs to remove any lippage and to make the floor perfectly levelled, from this step you need 4hp machine with planetary disc to increase the speed to 1000 rpm.
3. Wash, rinse and vacuum the marble floor then use fine metallic diamond discs to eliminate the deep scratches created from step 2, make sure to put enough water on the floor all the time.
4. Start with resin bond diamond disc 50 grit, 120 grit, 220 grit, now the floor should be smooth and all the scratches been eliminated and the marble ready for polishing.
5. Polishing steps start with resin bond diamond disc 400 grit, followed by 600, 800,1200,1800, 3500 grits, and this is the end of water polishing.
6. Apply natural abrasive polishing powder to restore the shine on the marble, make sure the floor is clean change the planetary disc and fit tarmac disc that help to heat up the surface with the polishing powder for quick and better results, floor polishing hair pad, put some polishing powder with some water to make it as paste or yogurt moving the machine across the area keep squeegee the powder till you reach the required shine, then clean and buff the floor. Job is done.
Lippage: A condition where edges of the tiles, pavers are not at the same level with each other. The most common way to see how much lippage there is, is by gauging the thickness of a 20p coin when placing it to the edge of the tile, and if the next tile is higher than the coin this can be considered a lippage. The main reason for lippage is inexperienced floor installation, or years of wear and tear, we can remove the lippage and make the floor levelled by different process to easily maintain the floor and to keep the shine. So it’s better to give us call then we can advise what your floor need. It could be only cleaning, full restoration, half restoration, diamond polishing or crystallization. We offer free estimates in London, Berkshire and Surrey.
Please call on 02071274277.
