Cutting Marble

Anonymous Poster · Sep 21, 2002

I happened across a sheet of white marble, and being that the wife's been looking for such to roll out cookies and pie crusts with her marble rolling pin, my brain immediately connected the dots, marble = pies.
Now I need to cut it to size. HOW?
One fellow I talked to claims it can be cut with a regular carbide tipped blade in a skill saw, and edges can be cut with a standard router and carbide bit. I tested, and marble is soft enough to carve with a jackknife. Somehow the skillsaw idea just doesn't seem right though.
I sure don't want to screw up the marble cause Marble = pies.

wroughtn_harv · Sep 21, 2002

I use a diamond blade in a worm drive.

Marble is soft.

What I'd do in you shoes is run down to the local box store and pick up a masonary blade for your circular saw.

I'd use good masking tape to cover not just where the saw is going to ride but where it's going to cut. I'd cut top side up and if you can, wet. But do tape it top and bottom.

A quick way to tell if it's marble versus granite countertop material is to look on the back side. You will see a mesh glued down to it. That's to help it stay together. Granite doesn't usually have the mesh. Marble almost always does.

Granite and marble make great rolling boards. They're not worth a flip though for handling meat. They are porous and will harbor bacteria.

For your edges there are a couple of solutions. The cheapest probably is to go to the body shop supply and get a variety of wet and dry sandpapers. Start off with real coarse to get shape. Then graduate up in grit, all done wet. Finish off with twelve to fifteen hundred like you're rubbing out a paint job on a car.

ScottAR · Sep 21, 2002

I saw a guy on tv handle the edge just like Harv describes... He used diamond grit sandpaper, but I bet silicon carbide would work fine since you only have a few edges. 3M black wet/dry is great stuff. It uses silicon carbide grit and is available up to 2000grit.

gotrocks · Sep 21, 2002

Franz,
In my opinion your best bet for a one time cutting of marble would be find a DRY Cut Diamond blade for a "Skill" saw. It will be extremely DUSTY so you may want to wear a mask and glasses for protection. I would clamp a straight edge (2x4 or piece of plywood) as my guide. Have the entire piece supported so when you get close to the end of cut it is not as likely to break off. Feed slow and steady. For the initial edge finish a dry silicon carbide belt sander works great, then you can start with finner grits until you are tired of sanding and ready for a pie.
A good hot cherry with double dip of Bryer's vanilla bean ice cream is my next suggestion.
The mesh backing another mentioned is not usually found in grade A marble. That is usually for marbles that are weak veined as subject to breaking even while handling. If you do happen to have granite the dry cut diamond blade will cut that as well just slower.
Good luck with your cutting, hope you don't lose your marble. Or do you have more than one? /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

Woody1 · Sep 21, 2002

find a ceramic tile installer and pay him 20 bucks or so to have him cut it with his wet saw. I would sell you mine for 500 bucks if ya wanted to cut it with it!
Seriously, this is the way to go. If you find a ceramic guy with a wet saw, he has handled this material before and knows how to cut it just to your needs. Pay him, cause blades are abour 80 bucks each.

wroughtn_harv · Sep 22, 2002

If you do use a diamond blade a couple of cautions. Make sure you use it the way it's designed. Some are made to use wet and some are made to use dry./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

If you overheat the blade be sure and keep the saw at full speed after the cut and let the blade straighten itself out. If you realize you've overheated the blade and you stop as would be logical you end up with a warped blade. Not good as a good blade can start at a hundred plus and go up.

One of the most interesting facts about diamond blades I learned when I had a coring crew come in and core an iron fence I put in around this beautiful pool.

The salesman came in and told me the guy would be there about a half a day and the job was nothing but a thing. They were there two and a half days. After they left I almost had to rent a power washer just to get the bad words off the deck.

You see the grit and density of the diamonds on the core bit are rock specific. One that cuts hard stuff great might not work worth a flip on soft stuff and vice versa.

This job the deck stone was harder than a bad girl's heart when the rent's late. And the coring crew had bits for stone softer and harder. They spent the first two days finding the right bit. Then the job went like butter.

The coring contractor also got to learn the hard way what I'd learned many years before. Iron rusts.

They didn't vacuum up their tailings as well as they should. Of course their tailings was a fine flour paste looking thing that wouldn't hurt nothing right?

Wrong. In some of the holes they'd passed through rebar. Some of the rebar sawdust got into the pool. A week later we had this beautiful pool with rust trails along the sides and bottoms. Not big ugly things, small faint ugly things........but almost as expensive as the big ugly ones to clean up./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif