revolution with marble + granite

leight weigth marble

We work with an Italian company.
They can produce ready-to-install panels from 3mm thick on aluminium honecomb.
Weight is then according to marble or granite grade and requested thickness.
Difficult to produce a comparison chart.
References are De Vries Feadship yachts since 10+ years.

Light weigth stones

Hi,

If you are interested in this type of material, during the last years I worked in the biggest yacht shipyard in Spain we used to work with the german company GRAMMA BLEND.

http://www.gramablend.de/english/frameset-01.html

You can get an idea of applications, materials and main features.

Regards,

Sarnacho

One question:

A big problem using this ligth weigth marble / granite is (apart from price), that in some marbles or granites you can see the honeycomb base.

We ordered in 2000 to an Italian supplier a full set of bathroom floors for a 95' motoryacht made in Onyx marble with inlays in Portoro marble, with the honeycomb,.... and when we received them,..... we could see the honeycomb through the Onyx marble, as it is so transparent!!!!!

HUGE PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Take care when using clear marbles o granites, honeycomb may show up through that stones.

Regards,

Sarnacho

As long as you're doing small areas, may as well go with the real thing. Composite material is great if you're using a lot of it. I don't think composite can withstand dropping a pan on it like the real thing can, so I would be careful using it in areas where it will get real wear, such as a galley. Also wet areas are best done with large pieces of stone, and the fewer the joints the better.

Dogsharks

You can use engineered stone or Corian for weight issues.

Also seemings are allwoay prone to trouble, acrylic solid surface materials has no seeming lines or leak risk.If the boat owner thinks, acrylic (ie.corian) looks cheap you can use engineered stone (ie. Zodiac).

If you need deeper info please let me know.

I know some of the lightest marble over substrate came from executive aircraft interiors,you may want to search in that direction if super light is important. That was years ago, I bet a lot of that technology has merged with yacht interiors..


I think the trick to nice corian tops is to do some nice inlay work. Even just a 3/16 to 1/4" strip of a differen color 1" in from the edge looks good. I like to add a natural wood as the rub rail,either a bull nose or simple chamfer with cherry or any hard wood,usually to match the cabinet.A CNC router table and you can really turn out some top notch work,but it still comes down to the individuals own 2 hands what the final product will look like.I know skilled hands are getting harder to find in todays young work force.

Still nothing says bling like some high gloss high polished stone.

Thin stones?

I like the thought but am concerned about use and overall wear. What would the thinest surface for a gally be? I like granite best. Any thoughts on Pink or the Verment granite?

We have been looking into redoing our galley with granite but the weight is for sure an issue, check out the new 60 Sea Ray, they are using a product called Karadon, much better looking than Corian. http://www.karadon.com/

Beautiful job in your Sea Ray! Nice!

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Regarding the use of real stone on board:

The weight factor is most certainly to be recokened with, but here is a perspective on the use of real stone in yachts. The delta (deviation between real stone and whatever else it is that can be used) is going to be less than a quarter tank of fuel even on the smaller boats like my 38' Chris Craft. Having said that, I would encourage people to use whatever stone lavishes their boating experience to the max, and forget about the weight factor. In the event some of the boats are planning on large areas of flatwork, then going to a 2cm thickness or some of the manufactured honeycomb backed products makes sense, but the latter is often more $$ than using solid stone, which can be obtained at any good stone company around the world.

We installed a 3cm granite countertop in our 40-year old Chris Craft Commander, and while I didn't like the 3cm thickness, we just couldn't find the same stone in a 2cm at the time, and we really loved the slab we found. Therefore we went ahead with it and never looked back. I considered changing house battery locations in order to avoid a listing of the boat, but didn't need to. At 7-pounds per gal of fuel, approximately, just a fluxuation of 10 gallons will be more weight factor than our use of stone on this size boat.

With the experience we've had on our relatively small boat, I would think any weight factor on larger craft would be even more insignificant than what we have encountered using the solid granite. Here is a link to a thread already posted on YachtForums, about this same topic, and I have posted a photo of our galley upgrade on a 40-year old boat, as a reference to anyone contemplating a galley remodeling.

Regards, Dogsharks

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/technical-discussion/2037-corian-solid-surface-material-use-m-y.html