Polishing Cultured Marble Cuts

neolitic

Have a cultured marble ( really more like
cultured granite) end splash that is to
long.
I'm guess the tile guy can make a good
cut with the wet saw, but what can I
use to polish the cut end?
TIA

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R&D Tile

Ask the tile guy if he has polishing pads for his grinder, never did cultured marble, but don't see why my silicone carbide pads shouldn't work the same as they do for any stone or porcelain.

Or, maybe clear nail polish.

neolitic

Thanks, I'll see.
My inclination was for fine
wet emery, or rouge.

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Bud Cline

You may not be able to polish the cuts.

Cultured marble is fake.

It is made of marble dust and resins. The mixture is poured into a mold that is first coated with clear acrylic. It is the clear acrylic that provides the shine and polish. Those things come out of the mold shiny and aren't usually polished as far as I knwo.

send_it_all

Why not just make the cut on the un-exposed end? The end that will be butting against the back splash.

Edsollen

I was a manufacturer of cultured marble in a previous life. Unless it was manufactured using an airless mixer and aluminum trihydrate as a filler you cannot finish a cut edge. Bud Cline is right except it is a polyester resin gelcote not acrylic.
Joel

Bud Cline

Polyester, acrylic, pixie dust, it's all the same to me.

neolitic

Can I use some kind of "pixie dust"(thanks Bud)
to coat it?
There will only be a ¼" strip showing.

I just may have to do that,
but it will take some "grinder magic".
The back splash has a funky cove
thing going on with it.

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Bud Cline

Turn it upside down and cut it with a circular saw with an abrasive masonry blade.

Edsollen

What Bud said or a dry cutting diamond blade. Ease off the cut edge with a sanding belt wrapped around a 2x4, helps the caulking joint look better. Trying to field apply the gelcote is possible but not really a good option.
Joel

Bill_Vincent

Joel, I'm sure you know alot more about this stuff than I do. All I can do is speak from personal experience. Years ago, I used to go around the country doing J.C. Penny's, and many of them were done with agglomerate marble (basically the same thing as what you're talking about, just thinner), and I've bullnosed and polished my share of those tiles using regular old PVA polishing pads.

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neolitic

Well, wet saw and 300 wet emery
and everyone is happy.
Stuff is more of a fake granite looking
product, than cultured marble.
Anyway tried the emory on the underside
of the vanity top and looked okay, so....

BTW...
What ever it is, the back side is only a tad
less glossy than the finished side,
not as dull as cultured marble would be.

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cmi456

Polished ends all the time. Easier to do it in the mold but an easy way is to cut the end that you want. Save the dust, mix it with clear shiney polyurethane you can then fill in the holes in the cultured marble and spray over again when dry have a shiney finish. It can be wet sanded with 600. I would start out coarser to get the desired shape but 600 wet will give a bit of a shine the problem is that without the clearcoat, just like natural stone it will evetually turn color due to dirt in the pores.. FYI true Cultured or Synthetic Marble is made from ground up marble to specific grinds. 4 times stronger than the natural stone and non-porous. Unfortunately most of the Yahoo's making the product don't know this.

jarvis design

Agglomerate marble is made up of pieces of real marble with "filler/binder/glue" to hold them together, and can be polished.
Cultured marble/granite is 100% synthetic and cannot be polished the same

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J&I_FLOORING

paint it with urithane you may get a wet polished look if all else fails