Getting the right product?

Hi Maurizio, We've just installed Ubatuba next to our stove. I thought I was going to ask you about your sealer, but I've read on the links below that Ubatuba is very hard and doesn't need a sealer. I got this stone secondhand, but I stopped at the company that originally fabricated it and they told me the stone comes in resined from their supplier. What does that mean to me and how I should treat this stone to keep it looking great? I don't understand what this resining process does to the stone. I will order your literature on cleaning and your cleaning products. Thanks! CW

 

Dear Courtney:

I personally have mixed feeling about the resining of stone slabs. All in all it would not represent a “bad doctoring”. In fact, if applied to the right stone and for the right purpose, it has green light with me, and big time, too. But if it is applied to a low-grade slab to “upgrade” it, then I would have a problem. But the real problem is that nobody can tell if that was the cas e… So, let's keep it on the positive side, okay? J

Now, what is resining and what is its purpose?

It much depends on the stone to be treated.

If the resining is done to certain so called “exotic granites” (whatever the heck of a stone they might be and whatever that means) we're talking about structural resining. The resin (epoxy all the time) is applied at the very beginning of the processing of the slab, because it has the task of actually keeping the slab together, or else its natural fragmentation would make it too fragile and virtually impossible to handle. That is good resining, because it allow s consumer to enjoy strikingly beautiful stones that wouldn't be available otherwise.

We then have resining motivated by the excessive natural pitting or fissures or high-absorbency of the different stones to be treated. In this cas e the resining is done with a much thinner epoxy (almost as thin as water) and toward the end of the processing of the slab in the automatic polishing lines, by flooding the surface of the slab with the epoxy, let it cure and then bring it back to the polishing line to finish the processing. Even this can be considered “good” resining, and the resining of a stone as naturally dense as Ubatuba falls in this particular type of resining.

None of the resin is on the surface of the stone, if not the little specs that fill the fissures and pits and that are flush with the solid part of the stone.

Usually a resined slab is permanently sealed, for epoxy is indeed an amazing impregnator and will not need any additional sealing. (Actually it would be impossible to seal.)

As for keeping you stone looking great, I believe that all you need is a good-quality stone spray cleaner like MB-5, teamed with a nice stone polish like MB-13 to be used sparingly and once a week or so. It will help a great deal to keep finger marks at bay.   

May I ask you now to please read and e-sign our Statement of Purpose at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/purpose.htm?

Ciao and good luck,

Maurizio Bertoli

 

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