“For those new to laying tile, the temptation is to pick the straightest wall and start laying the floor along it. While that may work with other flooring materials, tiles must begin from the center of the room. This gives you plenty of space to work outward to the walls and ensure a symmetrical pattern.”

Extreme How-To has an interesting and detailed article on the subject of professional tile layout. Click here to read it.

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My colleague, Marc McPherson, posts on his terrific Natural Stone blog and covers granite and travertine. My Slate blog will soon be amalgamated within Marc’s blog to give a more diverse and interesting view of natural stone. There will still be dedicated slate posts – just not on a daily basis. Our writing styles are pretty different, so you can easily tell who the author is on any particular day!

Thanks to everyone who is presently subscribed to my Slate blog. To ensure an uninterrupted flow of posts during the transition, please subscribe to the Natural Stone blog by clicking here. The change should be happening over the next few days.

Thanks!

Peter Phillips.

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Honister is a unique award winning experience and England’s last remaining working slate mine.

Located at the head of the Honister Pass in the centre of the Lake District, this mine produces the world famous Westmorland Green slate – a beautiful, functional material that has been extracted here for centuries. This slate is 400 million years old!

Within the visitor centre, you’ll find a wealth of activities, attractions and information. Guided underground tours can also be arranged. They have live displays of traditional slate processing skills which provide a fascinating insight into the region’s industrial heritage.

Honister is owned by a local family and is a supporter of the Lake District community, economy and the environment. To visit their website, click on the image below:

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“How stone is created is important to understand, because the composition affects its density, absorption rate, hardness and its appearance. Ultimately, these characteristics determine how natural stone should be maintained to keep its beauty for life. Every region of our world is different and therefore contains unique mineral deposits.”

Custom Building Products has produced a very interesting PDF brochure on stone care. Click on the link to download it: stonesealerbrochure

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“The following procedure for the installation of interior gauged natural slate flooring may be used over any wood or cement floor that is structurally sound and dry. In new home construction where plywood is used as a sub floor, it is suggested that sheets of 1/2″ or 5/8″ plywood be laid to insure rigidity where slate floors will be installed.”

To read the full article from Camara Slate Products, please click here.

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Old slate workings continue to dominate the small town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales.

Words and photo by kind permission of Dave Sallery. For more information from his tremendous website, please click here.

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MK Diamond Products, Inc. produces some impressive stone and tile saws with a host of features. Click here for more information on this model.

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Cultured stone veneer slate wall cladding is a product that I think will continue to gain in popularity. It is an aesthetically pleasing way to finish outside walls and looks absolutely stunning as an internal feature wall.

This is an example of Indian Autumn. If you have used this type of slate wall cladding and have any photos you want to show off, please post a comment with a link.

The photo below is an ocean of slate wall cladding waiting to be packaged at a factory in India.

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Click here for a rock picture gallery from About.com. The list shows 60 different stones under the classifications of Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic and ‘Other’. ‘Other’ refers to some pretty specialized rocks such as Fulgurite and Thunder Egg.

If you want to skip straight to the slate entry, click here.

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500 million years ago, towards the end of the period when slate was formed, life suddenly became more complex and diverse. This period, named the ‘Cambrian explosion’ is of immense scientific interest and was an important moment in the history of life on Earth.

This proliferation of life is dubbed the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ because of the relatively brief time span of radical evolutionary experimentation when many major animal groups first began to appear.

Normally, only hard parts of ancient animals became fossilized - the bones, teeth and shells. Soft parts of creatures were rarely preserved, so the simple plants and invertebrate animals that had evolved during the period of slate formation (450 to 600 million years ago) left little trace in the fossil record.

Studies suggest that massive upheavals in the earth’s crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world’s oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent huge volumes of oxygen into the atmosphere. This event may have helped trigger the most massive growth of biodiversity in Earth’s history.

The image above is of Sanctacaris uncata that evolved during the Cambrian Period. These grew to around 4” in length.

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