Marble floors
Marble is a compact limestone rock or dolomite rock, suitable for smoothing and polishing and has been used since ancient times as a material for sculptures and architecture.
It is mainly a hard, crystalline, porous rock formed by metamorphosis and essentially composed of calcite and dolomite grains.
Marble is generally uniform, but may appear fine-grained, depending on the crystallization process of the principal component elements (limestone or dolomite).
On the other hand, the color of marble depends mostly on the quantity of the secondary components, such as quartz, chlorite, garnet and graphite, and on the presence of mineral impurities (clay, lime, sand, iron oxides, flintstone).
White marble, instead, is the result of the metamorphosis of limestone rocks without impurities.
The extraction of marble takes place in appropriate quarries by means of high velocity sawing with coiled wire (diamond wire saws), or by the pressurization of water.
The slabs of marble which are obtained by extraction are used in finishings, in interior and exterior floorings and sometimes in the covering of furnishing components and in walls.
Subsequently, the marble slabs are polished with abrasives of decreasing grain size, pumice stone, emery paste and finally felt pads dipped in tin oxide.The typical porosity of marble favors the absorption of oily substances and so it is often subjected to specific protective treatments.
