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My first reaction was \u201cthat\u2019s cool!\u201d as the different shades of the Tennessee marble made each circle unique. My common sense then took over and realized the difficulty in making and installing four pieces per circle. Plus, in one of the circles, two out of the three stone points had chipped off long ago, and an ugly epoxy patch took its place. <\/p>\n
We in the stone industry, when given an option, avoid feathering stone to a point. There is no structural integrity to a stone point \u2013 especially in Verde Issorie marble. <\/p>\n
The original St. Paul Cathedral work was early 20th century; now, in the early 21st century, technology definitely changes how you can do things. With water-jet technology in mind, Agostino and I decided to promote a solid piece for the ring. There would be more waste, but the savings in fabrication and installation would offset the cost of extra stock. The architect\u2019s color renderings weren\u2019t conclusive about separate-piece or solid circles, so I figured we had a good chance to sell our idea.<\/p>\n
The trip to Italy took place in January 2009, which was also a low point of our economy. Any church project relies on contributions, so a bad economy can mean bad news for construction projects. The architect and the client told me this project would be moving forward, but the scope of the work, due to financial reasons, wasn\u2019t finalized.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve learned many things in our industry; one of them is to be a \u201cglass-half-full\u201d guy when terminology like \u201cscope not finalized\u201d is used. Other people in the construction trades, such as carpet or drywall or tile workers, don\u2019t know how insecure we stone contractors can get. When there are budget problems, we\u2019re always the first to go. <\/p>\n
It must have been around five in the afternoon on the second day of slab inspection that Agostino and I decided the best way to sell our idea about stone jointing would be to fabricate a mock-up and ship it to Sioux Falls. <\/p>\n
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We started small with thoughts of a 4\u2019 X 4\u2019 square showing the circle in one piece and a couple other colors touching the circle. The more we talked, the more we realized that maybe \u2013 just maybe \u2013 the mock-up could pull double-duty as fund raising tool to help with donations. We finally settled on a 16\u2019 X 8\u2019 mock-up showing all the colors in the walkways. Even though we weren\u2019t under contract and wouldn\u2019t charge for this mock-up, our chances were good that a dime spent now may result in making a dollar later.<\/p>\n
Agostino rushed the mock-up through his shop so it could make a February container bound for one of our other projects in Minnesota. In the meantime, I worked with the client about a place for the mock-up. Even though it was basically of a gift from us, finding a suitable location for a 128 ft\u00b2 piece of flooring was much-more-difficult than we imagined.<\/p>\n
The owner selected the narthex (entry lobby) for the location; the area between the doors would attract many parishioners. On April 2, 2009, two installers from Syverson Tile and Stone joined me in putting together the mock-up. We though it would be best not to glue the stone to the old stone floor, so we used pads of silicon.<\/p>\n
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In the weeks to follow the architect, owner, and parishioners got to see the stone up close for the first time. The comments I heard were positive \u2013 so the decision to bring in the mock-up, even without a contract in hand for the stone, proved to be the correct one.<\/p>\n
Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n
Joe Becker <\/a> Joe Becker has been in the natural-stone business for 26 years. He started with Cold Spring Granite as a draftsman and spent time in their stone installation and estimating departments. He is currently Vice President of St. Paul, Minn.-based Twin City Tile and Marble Company and oversees their stone operations.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a92010 Western Business Media Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Editor\u2019s note: Joe Becker continues his progress on stone-restoration work at the St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, S.D.<\/em><\/p>\n While presenting stone slabs to the owner and architect during the January 2009 trip<\/a>, Agostino Pocai, owner of Italmarble Pocai Srl,<\/a>, talked quite extensively with me about the marble floor \u2013 in particular about the many marble \u201ccircles\u201d that occurred in the architect Duncan Stroik\u2019s plans for the St. Joseph Cathedral renovation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[4194,3428,3810,4035,1044,4198,4195,4196,4197,3727],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-setting-in-stone","tag-agostino-pocai","tag-duncan-stroik","tag-emmanual-masqueray","tag-italmarble-pocai-srl","tag-joe-becker","tag-sioux-falls-sd","tag-st-joseph-catherdral","tag-st-paul-cathedral","tag-syverson-tile-and-stone","tag-twin-city-tile-and-marble"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Twin City Tile and Marble Company
St. Paul, Minn.<\/strong><\/p>\n