How good is marble to cut?

[Paul Slade]

Hi my names Paul, just joined this forum.

I've laid underfloor heating in my house - pipes covered in a liquid screed, and I've been looking for tiles to lay on top.

I'm in India at the moment and after visiting a lot of places I've seen some sheets of marble all from the same piece of stone. All sliced about 15mm thick, all perfectly strait, no warping or anything. Slab sizes are 3.2m x 1.1m. Bloke here is happy to cut them down to 900mm x 600mm.

I'm not totally convinced that his cuts are going to leave me with perfectly square pieces.

So my question about cutting marble in general. Is it a nightmare? Is it prone to shattering?

I'm a cabinet maker and I work with stone s lot, never used marble though. The price including the shipping and import tax is so good I'm happy to work with it at home, just don't want to buy half a ton of domething that is known to be a nightmare to work with.

And advice appreciated.

 

[J Sid]

you'll need to wet cut it, don't expect you have a machine to do that size. Get it cut out there or get a local stone supplier / worktops to cut it for you over here.

liquid screed ?

 

[Old Mod]

I think the real question here is, how do I become a cabinet maker? Haha
I want to go to India and choose my stone!

How fragile it is normally depends on the fishurs Contained within it.
Have you tried breaking a scrap piece?
Do shipping costs vary depending on the size of the piece, Or is it purely weight?
But as julian says, it normally cuts well with a wet saw, but 15mm is quite thin.

 

[Flintstone]

I use a fair bit of marble and it can be fragile at that thickness. Cutting it is not that difficult but you will need to wet cut it, you could possibly rent something to cut it with, I use a grinder for it and so do a team of chineese work top fitters local to me and they make a great job with some marble about 40mm thick

 

[Dan]

15mm is super thin I'm not sure that'd get here in the condition required. Have you seen how he is crating them up for that distance? Has he sent any befote that far?

 

[Paul Slade]

Hi Thanks for all the replies!

Rather than shovelling a dry concrete mix over underfloor heating pipes and screeding it flat by hand, a liquid screed is runny aggregate and chemical liquid screed which is pumped over the pipes and self levels. Supposedly it's stronger, certainly only a fraction of the time to lay.

I didn't plan on coming here to choose stone, I'm in a place called Rajasthan where a lot of marble is quarried and I gues because it's the source it's cheep. It's used here like we use plaster board. I've been into filthy restaurant toilets but they've had marble on the floor and up all the walls. It's mental.

The shipping is about £300 for part of a container which goes by sea. I think you pay for the space rather than the weight.

The bloke selling it has said that he'll cut it up and if any breaks I can have it all for free, so I gues he's pretty confident about it not having loads of fissures in it.

I think I'm going to take a gamble on it!

 

[Flintstone]

Sounds like it could be an anhydrite screed they are pumping in ? If so be cautious about drying times and the correct preperation methods

 

[Old Mod]

Not forgetting decoupling mat either! 😀

 

[Kyle Knowles]

And don't forget to sand the surface of the screed to get rid of that nasty top layer

 

[Paul Slade]

Didn't know about the sanding, thanks for that.

I recent bought some insulation off EBay from a bloke who had just built a house, quite a big house, and had fitted underfloor heating on he whole ground floor and then had it all tiled, he said it looked great. He got all giddy the day the tiler left and wacked the heating up to like 50 or something, excited about coming into work the next day to a nice warm house.

He said every single tile was cracked. What a nightmare.