Las Vegas stone supplier

Marble vs quartzite

This is the most useful comparison in the catalog, because a great many people who want marble should be buying quartzite and do not know the word. They look alike — both tend to a light ground with flowing veins — and they behave nothing alike. Marble is carbonate at about 3 on the Mohs scale: soft enough to scratch with a knife and chemically defenseless against acid. Quartzite is fused quartz at about 7: it will not scratch in normal use and acid does nothing to it. The catch is that the trade has been loose with the name, and some slabs sold as quartzite are dolomitic marble in disguise. A simple acid or scratch test on an offcut settles it, and anyone unwilling to let you test a sample is telling you something. If you want the look and the surface has to survive a working kitchen, start with quartzite and fall back to marble only if nothing in the range gives you the vein you want.