Oh, that reminds me of something. Whatever this stone was, it was sensitive to our alkaline cleaner. As this stone adjoined a ceramic tile kitchen, I went ahead and continued our cleaning across the marble to prep for our polishing.
 
   I remember John mentioning in class an instance of alkaline etching, or did he say "burning", a certain type of stone. Well, it did here. That's a first for me. Looked just like it had been etched. Not a big problem as we were going to hone & polish anyway, but made a HUGE mental note never to do that again. I've used that same alkaline at the same dilution on many marbles before yet never had that result. So I guess that means this stone is exceptionally soft?
 
   Yes, as I was going lean on the 5X powder anyway, there was way to much water involved. The combination of me flooding the neutral cleaner, on top of going lean, meant a lot of neutral water was running into my 5X.
 
   Thanks for the offer Carl. It would seem that we're not very threatening competition. And while we SHOULD be in hot water, this client is a nice old man who was overjoyed at the shine. He paid us before we were done. We are the only ones unhappy with this floor. We told him so and told him we'd be back to fix it when we could figure out the problem.
 
   At this point I'm leaning towards a non-acidic polish.
 
 
Eric Lewis, Technical Mgr
DirtyGroutGuys.com
West Chester, PA 19380

On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Pat Staples <cpstaples@msn.com> wrote:
It seams that you have yourself in some hot water, although you are our competition but you are also a fellow STP partner, if you can't get it fixed give me a call and I will come up and fix it for you. 
We are working in AC on a lage condominuim project but will be back on Wednesday, can take a look at it then and fix it on Thursday if you can figure it out.
Good luck
Carl Staples
Classic Marble & Stone Restoration
Broomall Pa.
Marblerestore.com
 
From: kcstoneguy@yahoo.com
To: sccpartners@stoneandtilepros.com
Subject: RE: [sccpartners] 5X Slinger
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2012 07:31:56 -0700

welcome to the wonderful world of stone. When i first started, would have problems like that a lot. But i learned that the powder I was using was too hot, ( i was using that Hertron junk)..I switched to true 5x powders, I will only use Italian Craftsman 5x powders, much easier to work with.

I always use an alkaline natural stone cleaner to neutralize  the acid of the powder polish, not a neutral cleaners.

#3 and probably most importantly, each stone varies in how sensitive it is.  A lot of time with a limestone or similar type stone, you dont really use much water at all, just mist the water and almost just do a dry polish. It just takes time and experience to learn what to do. It could be the photo, but it didnt really look like crema marfil to me, looked more like a limestone due to the color, most crema marfil has more of a yellow hue to it. And to be honest, some stones are so acid sensitive you just cannot use a powder polish like 5x...thats why i keep a bucket of Eastern Marbles 52b in the van, its a non acidic (tin oxide) compound.

my main suggestion is to cut back on the powder and not use so much water and see how that goes..

From: Eric - DGG <eric@dirtygroutguys.com>
To: Restoration and Maintenance <sccpartners@stoneandtilepros.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2012 9:09 AM
Subject: [sccpartners] 5X Slinger

   Trust you all are having a fine Easter weekend.
 
   First marble polishing job since being trained by John & Butch in beginning of March. 320 sq Crema Marfil foyer, powder room & hallway. Seemed like a nice simple first job. Right.
 
   The prescription was 220, 400 & 5X polish. Everything went fine up until the polish. After drying there appeared to be splash etching marks on the stone. My first assumption was that the mix ratio of the neutral cleaner was too light, so I quadrupled it. Repeated the polish which removed the etch marks, only to have new ones appear.
 
   Okay, so maybe using the pump sprayer to lay down the neutral barrier wasn't such a good idea, even though it appeared flooded. Switched to the academic bucket & mop method. Took extra care to lay it down thick. Yet still the marks appeared.
 
   The only other variable was how I removed the slurry. Used both wet vac & our truck mount spinner. Neither seemed to make a difference.
 
   I even tried just doing 10 sq at a time before extraction, as opposed to the normal 20. Same problem.
 
 
   Not a great photo, but the etch marks should be obvious.
 
   I was even sparing on the 5X as I discovered that the one pound container we had was only going to cover 250 sq.
 
   I know I'm a newbie, but this is ridiculous. Any clue as to what I'm doing wrong?
 
 
Eric Lewis
DirtyGroutGuys.com
West Chester, PA 19380



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