We love sharing the Stories Behind the Stones with our readers. As you walk through one of our showrooms, you’ll see such a variety of materials and colors from around the world. They are beautiful and have many interesting stories that we love sharing with you, but all the stones in our showrooms share a common story: the journey they take from the quarry to your kitchen.
The Quarry
The beautiful natural stones we offer all start in the earth, often inside a mountain. The stone is extracted in huge, rough blocks. The blocks are moved outside and stacked in a block yard. Water mist is applied to the stones to remove the dust from cutting and bring out the color so the true characteristics of the stone can be seen.
Cutting
The blocks are cut square and then head to the gang saw. The gang saw is a large saw with multiple parallel blades that cuts the block into slabs (a rough comparison would be the bread slicer in the bakery).
Finishing
The slabs are then typically polished. The polishing machine uses a mildly abrasive slurry with the polishing heads to get a beautiful finish on the stones. Some of our natural stones are honed, flamed or leathered – this is where the various finishes happen.
The Long Journey
Once the slabs are polished, they are carefully packed in wood frames, bundled for shipping and loaded into containers. About 40-60 slabs fit in a standard container.
Then they hit the road.
Containers with stones from Canada and the US are loaded onto trucks and driven to their destination.
Stones from distant places like Brazil, Italy and India, are transported via truck to docks and loaded onto container ships where they travel by sea to a port near their destination. Then, the containers are transferred back to trucks which take them overland to their destinations.
From the Showroom
Our showroom is one of these destinations. The containers are carefully unloaded, and the stones are placed via our crane system in our showrooms where homeowners visit and view the many beautiful marble, granite, soapstone and quartzite stones.
To Your Home
We invite you to explore our website and see which stones you prefer for your new kitchen; download our worksheet to help you keep track of what stones you like and to help you narrow down your choices. Then plan a visit to see these world travelers in one of our showrooms and decide which stone is the perfect stone for your project. Then, Boston Granite Exchange and your fabricator will get your stone to its final destination – your new kitchen.