Tile Gurus - Tell Me What To Do With This Travertine

Mike Finley

How do you deal with the edge of travertine when it is exposed? The stuff I am using is filled and honed, but the edges are not and they have unfilled holes on them too. No bullnose available, what do you do with the exposed edges?

Melissa

Use wet sand paper work your way up to about 600 depending on hone, but dry the tile really good as you go up in paper, because you don't want it to be shinier than the face polish. Use either grout or epoxy and mix color to match the fill in the tile.

I forgot to say, it helps too if you ease the edge a little bit so the edge isn't so blunt.

Mike Finley

I was afraid somebody was going to say what you said Melissa. Are you talking about by hand or using a sander? If the edge is excessable would you recommend doing it before or after installation?

Tileworks

Use an orbital sander. Start with a low grit, like 120, to bevel the edges, and then 360 to give it a light polish. As far as filling the holes, I would be prone to grouting them myself.

Or... You can create your own bullnose by giving it more than a bevel. Use your wet saw or grinder to take off a considerable amount of the outside corner, coming in perhaps 1/4 inch. Then follow through with the sander and grouting.

If you just want a slight beveled edge, you could do this before or after installation. If you want something more like a bullnose, you probably would want to "fabricate" these pieces first.

- Bob

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Mike Finley

Bob, the biggest fear I have is the edges looking wavy. This particilar situation is about 20 feet long and you will be able to look down the edge.

Mike Finley

Just to clarify you don't need any stone polishing pads - just wet sand paper? I haven't seen any wet sand paper for an orbital. Maybe I need to look in an auto supply store?

Melissa

An orbital might leave swirl marks.

Use a 5" disk sander if you want to do it dry for 1st steps to shape the edge

For final steps use a waterfed polisher. Makita makes one. The tool requires velcro back diamond pads which are a little spendy, but it's the right tool to use.

Another route you could go would be to look at one of the fabrication tool suppliers. They make foam blocks with diamond pads attached. They are great for hand and are a lot cheaper if you don't have a lot to do. It's $100 for a packet of them and it comes with 50-3000 grit.

Check out Hard Rock Tools. They have a website. Or Keystone Tools (800) 969-0661

Melissa

http://www.hardrocktool.com/ Looks like they have one in Denver.

Bud Cline

Mike a beltsander will help to eliminate most of the problem of the wavy edges. The larger the beltsander the better. I would suggest an 80 grit for travertine.

Most of the sandpapers available off the shelf are unfortunately aluminum oxide and tho it will work with travertine silicon-carbide belts would be much much better but I have to special order mine. In your area you can probably find a supplier that stocks them.

Releiving the edges first with a wet saw at a 45 degree angle is adviseable as TW suggests but not totally necessary with a beltsander and travertine. Granite yes, travertine not necessarily.

Once the surface is profiled where you want it then you can use a series of sandpapers to hand sand the edge. I use 220 dry then go to 440 wet then 800 wet then 1000 wet. This won't polish it to a gloss but will give you a nice matte finish. If you want to polish it then you can buff with rouge but be sure to use white only.

The wet/dry papers and rouges I buy from an automotive paint supplier called "Paint N Products Inc" they are national.

Keep in mind there is more than one way to do this and there are stone industry methods and tools available if you want to get real serious and invest a lot of money. I don't, and I have found the automotive products work just fine for me.

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Mike Finley

Thanks guys, I think you all gave me enough info to get me started, I have a bunch of travertine scraps so it sounds like it's time to just sand some stone and get the technique down.

GridRunnerFloor

angle grinders angle grinders angle grinders.

pull out your angle grinder and put a velcro wheel on it. get velcro sand paper as its the cheepest to get started with. it works great you can give it a full complete bullnose using sandpaper i've done countless thousands of feet of bullnosing by hand and flat polish on granite marble and travertine. from flat polishes on travertine to mirror finnishes on granite.

the trick is to lay out your tiles on a work table flush the edges up and put a backstop behind them and weight on top of them. let them overhang the table half inch to an inch.

to avoid the wavy lines. put a row of tape on the top part of the tile on the edge and then take a straight edge and mark a line how ever far in you'd like your bullnose to be then cut it with the straight edge still in place.... peal away the waste tape and you have a line to work up too.

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