How to buy Natural Stones – Shopping Guide

These are common expressions when a buyer visits the first time at the premises of World of Stones USA. Not here, everywhere it happens when a buyer looks at ranks demonstrating a variety of stones even after touching many of those. It is true that the catalog mostly contains brand names of stones, which usually differ from one brand to another.

Thereby, our natural stone consultants got inspired to write a stone shopping guide as a reader-friendly post accessible on the web for all. The content of the natural stone buyer guide is as follows.

• Stone Types
• Applications
• Properties of Natural Stones
• How to Test Properties
• Natural Stone Textures
• Natural Stone Maintenance
• Natural Stone Costing

Introduction to Natural Stone Types Based On Their Origin

If you are tech-savvy and use Google-like search engine to know about the origin of natural rocks, which we are quarrying and obtaining dimension stones for construction and other purposes, you may have come across three major geological terminologies:

1. Igneous rocks: It comes from molten volcanic stuff like magma.
2. Sedimentary rocks: It forms when eroded fragments of other rocks is settled and compressed in the crust of the earth.
3. Metamorphic rocks: It forms when igneous and sedimentary rocks are transformed due to pressure and heat.

However, in the construction industry -people are accustomed to only two segments of rocks:

1. Siliceous rocks: Which contains Silica or sand as the major element. Quartzite, Granites, Slate, and Sandstone are ideal examples of it.
2. Calcareous rocks: Which contains Calcium as the major element. Marble, Limestone, & travertine are following in this category. 

In industry, natural stones are used in different forms, such as:

Whole Stones

Cubes	Slabs
Cubes used as stacked stones as structural elements. Today, it is used in hardscapes only.	Slabs used on floors and walls in moderate thickness in interior & exterior applications.

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