Masonry Magazine September 2002 Page. 34
Stone
CUTTING
The big thing now is the quietness of blades.
"If people are cutting granite on the sides of buildings with concrete behind it," notes Shrater, "using handheld saws with 12-inch and 14-inch blades and they are looking for blade life, I recommend a segmented blade. If they are looking for fast cuts, and not concerned about blade life but they do need a decent finish, I'd go with a turbo blade. If they're looking for a chip-free finish, I'd go with a continuous rim blade."
With his boss sitting next to him, Shrater adds, "This is where the salesmen need to know the application. We go on the jobsite with our customers to be sure we understand what the material is like and what blade to recommend."
To which Maddock comments, "Before a customer goes out and cuts some of those 'rocks, we'll ask them to send us samples. We sit in the yard behind our offices, testing it with different equipment until we get then the blade they need. I tell the salesmen, if you're not sure of something, don't lie to the customer, find the answer or test the material. Different customers have different needs. With the salesmen asking the right questions, we can get the customer into the right product."
Maddock says he's a hands-on owner who deals with a lot of innovative products. So, where is the diamond blade business going in regard to cutting stone? "What we are doing is looking for ways to make things more efficient or make the product last longer. Every day I'm on the Internet with China and Korea, and factories here in the U.S., dealing with how can we make it better for the customer, or less expensive to cut our customers' costs down. If we're not saving them money, we're not doing our job.
"The big thing now is the quietness of blades," he continues. "That is a problem, of course, for stone fabricators. In the fabrication shops where they're using the big bridge saws to cut huge slabs into usable pieces, it's very loud. So they are putting copper in the middle of the cores of diamond blades, to cut the noise while they are cutting the stone."
If you have a three-layer blade with tool steel on the outside and copper in the middle-a sandwich core the sound is much quieter. "It's changed a lot of people's lives in the stone fabrication shops over the years," says Maddock. "Now they're starting to do it the same way for the masonry market because OSHA is cracking down on noise on job sites."
Shrater chimes in, "If our customers have anything that they think might work better, give us the idea. That's the number one thing we tell our customers, "You guys are out there doing the work, if you have something you think might work better, tell us' And they do tell us. Every day somebody gives us a new idea how we can change or better something."
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32 Masonry
September 2002
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