KB Home \| Advanced Search \| Ask Question
Ask Your Natural Stone Questions

Black Galaxy and shoe polish

Article Number: 761 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Wed, Nov 7, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Dear Maurizio, I have just found the marblecleaning.org site and was impressed with your deep knowledge about all kind of stones. We have just remodeled our kitchen last week with the Black Galaxy countertop. During the process, I saw the fabricator joined the seam of two slabs with some kind of black adhesive. However, the 2 slabs did not have the same thickness, so he grind the surface of the slab then applied the shoe polish on it. The fabricator said the stone was from China and sometimes all slabs did not have the same thickness or evenly surface. Is this true? After reading all the articles about Black Galaxy here, I am afraid that I have bought the doctored stone. The company sold me the stone gave me 3 years guarantee of labor and material. Beside the lemon test, is there any other test that I can perfom to make sure the stone I got is not the doctored one? I appreciate any advise you can provide.

Dear Andrew:

Black Galaxy is quarried in India, but could have been processed in China. If that's the case, the Chinese are typically pretty accurate with their workmanship; but there's never any guarantee that each slab is always going to be the same exact thickness.

However, that should not be a problem. I mean, if one slab is thicker than the other, it means that the other is thinner than the first, right?

So instead of doing such a stupid thing like grinding the thicher one and then - since by your report they clearly don't know much about face polishing granite and "granite" - applying some sort of shoe-shine to it (which you have to reject right now), why didn't they shimmed the thinner slab??...

Well, perhaps it was too easy!

What happened has nothing to do with the possibility that your slabs could have been doctored by the factory, but if it true that the stone was processed in China, chances are that it was not doctored. So far, I never heard of a doctored Chinese slab.

That said, as I hinted before, reject the doctored repair and stand your ground on it.

And, BTW, I hope that they didn't apply any sealer to that stone!

Now remember, it's never too early to think about the proper maintenance of your stone. The issue of what you'll be doing day in and day out to your stone is – as it should be intuitive – vastly more important than its sealing (if and when possible and/or advisable - which in the case of Norite it is not) and it's all too often neglected. As you can tell by reading many of this site's postings, you're not likely to get good information about routine care from your dealer or installer. Don't become another statistic! By logging into the Helpful Hints section of our website at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/helpful-hints.htm , you will be able to get the short version of our maintenance guidelines at no charge. The full version of it – a 7-page document considered by many as an industry benchmark – is available in pay- per-download format in our Educational Literature section at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/literature.htm .

And remember, every single penny of the cost of the literature will be used to support this site and its cause: your cause.

While you are in the “Helpful Hints” section, do spend some time reading all of the interesting FREE articles you'll find in there!

Finally, keep in mind that we need your support to help us helping you!

Will you please read and e-sign our Statement of Purpose at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/purpose.htm?

By spreading the word about this valuable site among your friend & family and the stone trades' people you've been dealing with, you will be rendering everybody a valuable service!

Thank you

Ciao and good luck,

Maurizio Bertoli

www.marblecleaning.org – The only Consumers' Portal to the Stone Industry Establishment!