Natural Stone Geology 101- Related To Thin Porcelain Panels

Welcome to the Tile Confidential podcast. My name is Sol, an author, tile installer, and owner of Vela Tile Store. I want to help you with choosing tile for your next home improvement project a breeze. You’re about to embark on journey into the world of tile and learn about tile from myself and other leading experts in the industry. The goal is to hep you shop for thin porcelain panel tiles with confidence. This is a community where we share pictures, ideas and everything else to do with tile.

The Following Is A Transcription Of A Section Of The Podcast Episode Which You Can Find Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppf-PRCMoIA&t=253s

GEOLOGY 101 FOR NATURAL STONES

The next thing I want to discuss how do these stones are categorized in Little Geology 101 stones, natural stones in our Earth is formed through three different ways. The first one is called sedimentary stone formation. The second one is metamorphic stone formation. And third one is Igneous stone formation.

Basically, when you think of something like quartz or marble or onyx or travertine, they’re all going to fall under one of these three stone formations in the Earth. And that’s how they look very different from each other. So I think it’d be important for you to know when you are going to the store and you’re looking at a particular tile, and if you see, let’s say, veining versus if you see stripes of lines, you can think of yourself, oh, interesting. This is a metamorphic stone formation type of tile. I’m not sure.

Let’s say you’re not really confident about which particular stone it is, but you can kind of tell what stone formation it’s trying to mimic. And that can be kind of interesting. That can bring a bit of a character to that tile that you’re determining. You don’t need to look at it as like, is it a matte or polish? Let’s look at it deeper.

Let’s look at it from a point of view of almost like selecting natural stone. So Sedimentary Stone Formation are basically rocks that are formed near the Earth’s surface in contrast to like, igneous or metamorphic rocks. These are kind of formed within the deep depth of the Earth. So sedimentary rocks, more closer to the surface, they’re basically formed from deposit of pre-existing rocks or pieces. Or it can be sometimes like once living organisms like shells, fossils and stuff like that, and then basically accumulating layer by layer on the Earth’s surface.

And then as it’s being layered, it gets very deeply and it becomes compacted and then cemented as well. And through this pressure, it forms this sedimentary rock.

A lot of other factors play into the formation of them. Not just this erosion, weathering, wind, rain, just natural geological effects that we all experienced. These are all over. We’re talking like millions of years. Basically.

These slowly break down large rocks off the mountains and then they create smaller ones and these pile up, which like create sands and heavy sand layering up on top of another. So we’re talking millions of years. And there’s other aspects of it as well, like acidity, which can wear stone away, and some of the interesting colors that we might see within cross section of one of these blocks that might be harvested. Let’s just say in the case of a natural stone, we can kind of see the effects of different chemistry also how that plays into it. So sedimentary rocks tend to look very layered.

So if you ever look at a porcelain tile and it looks kind of layered, that’s going to mimic a sedimentary rock tile. And typically, for our purposes, these type of tiles mimic either a limestone kind of effect, a travertine kind of effect, or an onyx kind of effect, or sandstones.

In our YouTube channel, I will also make a video and just show you what these actually look like. But for now, the purpose of this episode was just to kind of go over the details of the different categories.

So the next one is metamorphic rock formation. And as I mentioned earlier, they are more underneath the sedimentary rock formations. They’re deeper into the Earth. And the way they are formed is through high heat, high pressure, and like, high mineral rich fluids. And typically, it’s a combination of all of these factors that tie in together to create such rock.

It’s very unlikely that one of these elements is missing, is going to form. And that’s why conditions of these are found, like deep within the Earth where tectonic plates might meet and shift.

That the criteria for kind of making these, as you can see, quite different than the sedimentary rocks formation. So as a result, you can expect a different kind of look to these types of stones.

When we talk about high heat, high pressure, high mineral reach fluids, tectonic plates colliding.

And one of the elements is that even though all these things are happening, it requires the rock to stay in a solid state and not melt. Because if it melts, it’s not going to form your metamorphic rock. So it’s very unique things that needs to happen in order for it to form. And typically what you get out of it is stones like marble, slate quartzite, serpentine and soap stones. So a lot of veiny type of stones that you might see are typically almost all the time metamorphic stones.

And moving on to our final stone formation is igneous rocks. Think of igneous rocks. I think most of us will think of granite. And we all know what granite looks like. And it sort of looks like it just came out of a lava, right?

So igneous rocks are formed from magma and which then cools and crystallizes. And it’s typically either at the volcanoes on the Earth’s surface or while a melted rock is inside within a crust that comes to the surface of the Earth from a deep core close to the crust. But it requires a really high temperature. So these are the rocks that you would think remember I said earlier, metamorphic shouldn’t melt. These are the rocks that basically melt and then they become the effects of what you see out of igneous storm formation.

And they call and they create things like granite or basalt. Basalt is a lot more darker. I personally worked with it before I made a porch out of it. And it is a beautiful stone, absolutely beautiful. Kind of gives you that jet black kind of look, especially if it’s polished and you seal it as well with maybe a polished sealer that can make it look really nice.

The next element of importance to discuss is although we kind of categorize these stones in sedimentary metamorphic or igneous. There’s another thing to consider as well. Just for the sake of argument. Because these stones can also be categorized under their mineral composition. Probably not so going to be so important for you to remember when you go into a tile store.But it’s just good to know. Like, the mineral composition of these stones also becomes a factor in terms of how they look. So the two mineral composition categories are calculated stones or Celicia of stones.

Calcario stones are tend to be made up of calcium carbonite, like mostly made of calcium carbonate. If a particular situation where there’s some magnesium carbonate, it might be a dolomite, it will become a dolomite, but most of the time, calcium carbonate silicious stones are made of silica and silicates. So calculus stones are stones like limestone travertine onyx marble. These are your calculus. These are stones that are calcium carbonate based.

Celicia stones are like sandstones, slate, quartzite, serpentine, soapstone, granite, basalt.

 

Want To Listen To The Entire Episode?…

 

Link To The Full Podcast On Spotify:

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/SdDjIOJ2Esb

 

Link To The Full Podcast On Youtube

Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF_Bn7bT4FiRG4r5fPFiwIg

 

Link To My Book:

CANADA https://amzn.to/3wiLlFY
USA: https://amzn.to/3wiok6a

Joint Our Facebook Group And Don’t Miss New Content!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2583263741816882

 

Need Help Finding The Right Tile? Contact Us To Book A Tile Consultation At Our Showroom Or Visit The Shop Page To See Our Latest Tile Collections!