We’ve talked in the past about possible solutions to chips, spalling, and small surface cracks in your natural stone. To a certain point, small bits of damage to the surface are completely manageable, especially by a trained professional.
Sometimes though, such as when your natural stone cracks or a fissure appears, the damage is greater than can be restored.
So what do you do when your surfaces experience deep, lasting damage?
Epoxy
Well, the unfortunate truth is that there are really only two options: replace your natural stone, or try to fill the cracks with an epoxy. Sometimes, replacing all of your stone isn’t a realistic option, so let’s look at what you can expect from filling the fissure.
An epoxy is a liquid resin that dries hard, chemically bonding to surfaces within cracks and fissures.
A good epoxy will run through every crevice within the damaged part of your stone, and will set into a solid, reasonably durable filler material.
Although it is not structural by any means, in terms of filling the gap, epoxy gets the job done. The big challenge you can be sure to face when using an epoxy is in matching the color and texture of the stone you are trying to repair.
Clear epoxies recede and won’t stand out.
As such, if preserving the beauty of your natural stone is paramount, then you will need to match the color and character of the stone you’re repairing.
This is no small task
It takes no small amount of experience and the eye of an artist to get anywhere close.
And close is good! If it’s near enough to the original that someone has to look twice to see where the damage was, then you (or your contractor!) has done a great job.
This only applies to solid slab colors, if there are any pigmentation or color variances in the stone, clear resin is the only choice because you cannot color match stone slabs (such as Carrera marble or yellow granite) that have complicated color variances.’
If you are in the Santa Barbara area, I’ve got GREAT news for you – at Santa Barbara Stone Masters, we pride ourselves on our excellence in challenges just like these!
We’ve always thought of our work as artistry, and if you’ve got natural stone that needs deep crack or fissure repair, nobody can serve you better than we!
Give us a call today!
