Durable Engineered Stone

What's the most durable surface in the world? A countertop made of diamonds probably. The next best surface material might be quartzite, but just beneath that is a man made substance called engineered stone.

Companies such as Caesarstone, LG, Silestone, and Cambria Stone are adept at producing an incredibly hard and impermeable surface that the industry generalizes as "engineered stone". This countertop material is made of real stone that is ground down and combined in pleasing and predictable color palettes with a polymer that binds it together.

The lure of engineered stone is it's durability, combined with the fact that every slab can look the same, allowing for great seam matching and easy color schemes for decorating. Many engineered stones are resistant to bacteria, and come sealed forever so that re-sealing is not an issue. The wide variety of colors, including bright hues of green from Caesarstone, as well as realistic simulated granite patterns from Cambria Stone, make the concept even more attractive.

In the fabrication shops, fabricators will attest for the solid nature of engineered stone. When being fabricated, these materials rarely break in unpredictable ways like granite can. Granite and marble, being formed by nature, sometimes have fissures between crystals that can come apart when under the extreme pressures of fabrication. Engineered stone stays together under conditions that would often see a natural stone break.

The only drawback to engineered stone slabs is the one attribute that also attracts homeowners: it's predictable colors and patterns. A slab of granite is like a work of art, often beautiful enough to frame and place as a wall decoration with it's strata and movement. Granite's spontaneous colors and wandering patterns won't be found in engineered stone, but for many designs that works out well.

Find engineered stone as well as natural stone at www.nssgranite.com or visit us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444.

A Peek Into Our Showroom!

Natural Stone Source has a vast extensive showroom in Nipomo, California. It's full of hundreds of slabs of granite, marble, travertine, and quartzite, plus thousands of varieties of tile to choose from. The following video is just a glimpse of what we have to offer, taken from our first commercial in 2012. Enjoy!

To learn more about the tile and marble, travertine, and granite carried in our showroom, please visit us at www.nssgranite.com, or visit us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444!

Natural Stone Source Showroom

Last year Natural Stone Source was featured on a local program called The Home Show. This video account of the event is a nice peek into our showroom. Featured are some of the stone we currently offer and work with, along with the processes known to the granite fabrication industry. Have a look!

Find more details about our ever expanding showroom at www.nssgranite.com or visit us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444.

Better Granite Tools

The tool market has many options when it comes to tools for fabricating granite. Polishers, grinders, and saws need to be especially strong and long-lived, with the right attributes. 

The Makita variable speed grinder seems to be a common favorite among granite fabricators. With a variable speed Makita you can do any cutting or polishing necessary to complete your granite or marble job. This machine has the right RPM's to do quality work, and the Makita is well-built to last a long time.

Natural Stone Source is currently holding a blowout sale on Makita variable speed grinders in their showroom as well as online for the month of January. The Makita 5" variable speed, #9565CV, is on sale for $140.00. If you are in the area, head on down! We are at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California. Or call us at (805) 540-8051 and we will take a credit card over the phone (shipping rates apply).

Find information about our showroom at www.nssgranite.com or visit our tool site at www.nssgranitetools.com!

Vein Cut and Cross Cut Stone

Before a slab becomes a slab, granite or travertine is pulled from the earth in the form of a block. Veins of various minerals, each of a unique color and texture, run through the block of stone. These mineral veins will give the future slabs their pattern and character. The nature of that pattern, however, is determined by what direction the stone block is sliced.

A massive block of natural stone containing veins can be cut one of two ways.

Vein Cut Stone

A vein cut slab shows the mineral veins running either lengthwise along the slab or vertically. This is also known as cutting “against the vein”.

Cross Cut Stone

A cross cut slab is sliced at a 90 degree angle to what the vein cut slab would have been. It shows a cross section of the veins and layers in the stone block. This style of cut is also called "with the vein".

Though two slabs from the same block share the exact same composition of colors and minerals, the results can be wildly different. The Tobacco Brown slabs from Italy, shown above, demonstrate the incredible differences between vein cut and cross cut granite.

To see what slabs we currently carry in stock, please see www.nssgranite.com or visit us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444.

Bookmatched and Butterflied

When a block of stone is sliced to produce individual slabs, the granite and marble quarries will usually implement a practice of bookmatching the slabs, also known as “butterflying”.  

Above, a rough block of Calcatta marble is ready to be sliced into slabs.

To bookmatch slabs, every other slab receives a high polish on opposite sides of the rock. When consecutive slabs are placed side by side, they are nearly mirror images of one another. Thus, they are like a book that has been opened, or, like a butterfly with identical wings spread out.

Here the Calcatta slab slices have been polished in bookmatch fashion.

Bookmatching is useful detail for fabricators when they would like the seam in a kitchen countertop to flow continuously. When the slab has a good deal of movement, especially, or when the color variation is great, granite fabricators can simply continue the countertop stretch into the next consecutive slab.

Butterflied Roma Imperial

Countertops that employ bookmatched slabs are usually able to have a stripe or wave continue across the seam, for a complete visual of the geological process that formed the stone underground over millions of years.

A beautiful example of how movement can be continued across a seam.


To see what slabs we currently have in stock, please visit www.nssgranite.com or come see us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444.

From Earth to Slab

Granite and marble is quarried from the earth in many locations across the world. Once cut from the ground in large blocks, the stone is then processed into slabs and shipped to various natural stone showrooms.

A quarry is an excavated area known to be rich in solid granite of desirable color and pattern. Through careful planning, the shape of each granite block is mapped and marked from above. Along these lines, holes are drilled, and explosives and wedges are inserted into the holes. When the charge goes off, the block splits from the mountain and often slides or tumbles quite a distance before stopping.

Heavy machinery is used to hoist each block to the factory where the granite and marble blocks will be sliced as if they were loaves of bread. Great saws employ several sizes of blades to simultaneously cut through each layer of stone.

Once the rough slabs are cut, they undergo the polishing process. Each slab is held in place with suction cups while a polishing machine gives the surface a high gloss that usually cannot be reproduced by hand.

Polished slabs are bundled in series with the other slabs that were cut from the same block, in sequence. Often, alternating slabs in the sequence will have the reverse side polished, in order to provide “book-matched” sets of slabs.

Bundles are shipped to distributors across the world and displayed in showrooms such as Natural Stone Source for homeowners to choose from. 

To see what slabs Natural Stone Source is currently carrying, please visit us at www.nssgranite.com or come see us in person at 425 N. Frontage Rd. in Nipomo California, 93444.