[Rockhounds] Help request - or you can't take it for granite!

[Alan Goldstein]

I concur with Kreigh on this matter. At the annual home and garden show, I 
have talked to a number of local counter-top businesses who tell me they pay 
trash hauling companies to take tons of scrap countertop material away to 
the landfill. One wholesaler brings in a pallet containing 4"x4" and 6"x6" 
cut & polished samples to give away! They have dozens of rock types and 
while igneous and metamorphic dominate, limestone and sandstone are also 
commonly used. Most of the material comes from Brazil, Pakistan and India. 
(One had a 6' x 12' slab of Afghan sodalite-bearing syenite that was 
incredible! They wouldn't tell me how much it cost other than saying 
"astronomical.") The U.S., China and Italy are also major producers of cut 
stone for interior decorative purposes.  Sometimes they can tell you the 
rock type, but most don't know a granodiorite from a syenite.

As a side note... At one show I talked to the company owner about a 
quartzite slab they had labeled as granite. I showed her why it was a 
quartzite and she told me that granite has a very high tariff while 
sedimentary rocks do not. She was going to make sure that rock was going to 
be imported under the correct classification in the future!

Alan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kreigh Tomaszewski" <Kreigh at tomaszewski.net>
To: "Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors" 
<rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Help request


> Neal,
>
> Visit your local stone countertop store, and local gravestone dealer,
> and see if they have scraps or trim specimens of the various rock types
> you are interested in.
>
> Kreigh