Restoration Standards?

October 13, 2009

My first inclination is to ask, “Would you like me to wash your car for you, too? Or how about I just text you my bank-account information instead?” My inner adult then gives my inner child a time-out, and I offer a more-responsible answer: There are no “true” standard procedures for restoration.

There are very good reasons why. First, the majority of those asking these questions are coming into the stone industry (or wanting to come in) from the janitorial business or installation industry. They are used to dealing with absolutes.

When they deal with VCT (vinyl composite tile) or carpet, they are essentially dealing with a man-made or natural material that is the same across the board. Stone is different in makeup from one class or species to the next (limestone to granite, for example) and they can be different in makeup within their own classifications. For example, within the generally accepted class of stone sold as granite, you have true granites, basalts, gneiss and schists.

Another factor in the whole standards quandary is related to the fact that, while not all roads may lead to Rome anymore, there are a lot that do. Let me illustrate.

For years, my family would travel to Florida in the winter. Now, according to my family, the only way to get there was to take I-75 from Detroit down to the Sunshine State. So, when I relate this to my company polishing a certain type of stone, we use one method and go through a certain series of states (or steps); because we can’t alter where I-75 goes, neither can my techs alter our methods.

Now, if my good friend Melvin in Knoxville wants to go to Florida, he’s already halfway there, so he doesn’t need to start in Detroit, but rather from Tennessee. And sometimes, with stone, you don’t need to start from the beginning, so why would I want to make Melvin come up to meet me in Detroit when he is already halfway to the finish line?

Another wrench in the standards works could be, in continuing that meander to Miami, like traffic in Atlanta. What if I-75 is all backed up at one point downtown? Am I supposed to wait for hours on-end because of powers beyond my control? Or take the I-285 beltway and avoid the problem?

Sometimes certain stones have a certain personality (like voids) that don’t show themselves until you get there; you need to go a little further with your work, but you save yourself many headaches. The key here is that you have to expect the unexpected; if there were standards made up for these, you could end up taking too much time to prevent problems that possibly aren’t there (as with no voids or problems). In the stone-restoration business, you need to know your goal, plan for problems, and be flexible enough to be able to change gears if you want to get to where you need to go.

Another factor: I mapped out my trip to Florida from MY perspective, based on the equipment and situations I have in my life. What if you live in New York? Or Oregon? The point here is that if I give you standards based on my perspective, you may not be able to achieve the same results because you’ll be diverted.

How so? I’m stretching the travel simile a bit slim, but consider that someone from New York would be better off taking I-95 to Florida instead of I-75. You may have completely different equipment, diamonds and compounds than mine; trying to use your 110V equipment and generic diamond pads (bought on sale from the lowest bidder), could double or triple the amount of time to complete the same area and stone type that our 220V equipment accomplishes. So does that mean someone should make the equipment that I use standard? (I could see many manufacturers protesting that move.)

I’m sure someone out there is thinking, “Why is he talking about driving? Has this Crazy Canadian never heard of the modern invention called air travel?” You bet; I do prefer to fly for business over my dogsled and Ski-Doo® (it does get hard to use such forms of transport during our six months of hard sledding), but in the Wide World of Stone Restoration no one has successfully completed the Kitty Hawk jump of making restoration easy.

While new people in the industry are easily pulled into the notion of flying through the hard grind (pun intended) with quick-fix methods and surefire systems, the reality is that true restoration is not easy. Yes, you can polish a stone with a compound and get great results, but compound polishing is NOT restoration. It’s polishing, it’s maintenance and it’s a finishing product.

As mentioned earlier, those asking for hard-and-fast rules are generally newer ones in the industry and used to systems and working on media with chemical based solutions. Many of the companies that manufacture the solutions (liquid and services) for these individuals are trying to find ways to make stone restoration easy and cut-and-dried.

While there are a few new innovations that can assist in certain maintenance of stone, I have yet to see any that eliminate the basic steps needed to truly restore stone.

To quote my friend Brian Briggs: “All we do is rub hard rocks against softer ones until they look pretty.” That fact has not changed since the time of the Pharaohs until now and I do not see the end anytime soon.

So don’t take your marble for granite (ouch) … and until next time, “keep your stick on the ice.”

Tom McNall is founder and owner of Great Northern Stone Care, a Huron Park, Ontario-based stone-cleaning and -restoration company servicing all of southern Ontario. Tom offers corporate and private consultations, serves as a trainer for the Marble Institute of America, and is also on the organization’s board of directors. He’ll present “Managing the Big Restoration Job” on Oct. 21 and “Walking the Fine Line Between Maintenance and Restoration” on Oct. 22 at StonExpo Marmomacc Americas in Las Vegas. McNall can be reached at stone_rx@earthlink.net.