Special equipment is used to carry the 1,800 pound granite slab.

Text and Photo
By Shari Benyouski
Guest Columnist

PIERCETON — Your granite countertop began its life roiling beneath the earth as a pool of molten magma collecting and melting mica, trace elements, quartz and feldspar into swirls. Despite its dark birthplace, if you stare at that countertop long enough, you’ll see constellations, stars, and galaxies.

Millenia later we mine most of those cooled slabs from beneath the crusts of Brazil, Italy, India and China. I met a few of these slabs by driving nine minutes from downtown Warsaw to The Granite Shop, a Keystone GraniteWerks Company where Inside Sales and Digital Marketing Director Dan Holderman took an hour out of his busy day to introduce me.

A collage of some of the process. Courtesy of Dan Holderman.

“Believe it or not…” Holderman paused to answer an urgent phone call from one of the other offices looking for an order. “Don’t worry, I’ll find it,” he said to the phone confidently. Putting the phone down he turned back to me without missing a beat: “Believe it or not, we do 40 to 50 kitchens a week. Let me show you around.”

We strode through the showroom. “Five to six people a day pop into this location.” He waved at the displays of smaller pieces of granite and marble. “Those really aren’t big enough to get a feel for how it will look in a house though.” He showed me to the warehouse section filled with enormous slabs of rock. “You’d never guess where they come from.”

Here is a video of workers in Brazil drilling holes and blasting the enormous pieces and letting them fall like dominoes.

Just at that moment beeping interrupted us. We stepped out of the way of a machine with an enormous claw that reached into the upright walls of slabs and pulled out a brilliant white one. “White Aurora,” Holderman informed me. He scanned the stacks. “Ah ha. Here’s the one they need for Elkhart.” He waved over the guys and pointed it out. “Bella Dolce, Dekton, Cosentino…” He told me about colors and suppliers as we walked.

“But how does all of that rock under the surface get into these 3-inch polished slices in someone’s kitchen?” I wondered out loud. He waved me outside where he showed me the setup for transporting one of those 1,800 pound slabs from Elkhart to Warsaw to Fort Wayne. “If you look at it carefully, you can see greens and pinks and diamonds,” Holderman pointed out. At the right angle, the slab reflected the sky. The truck appeared to transport a slice of heaven.

We entered another warehouse. “Here’s where the magic happens.” Holderman pointed at an enormous machine run by a team of guys in gray T-shirts and jeans. “These guys here are experts. They each have about 20 years of experience.”

Justin, one of the polishers.

The team was running vast polishing and cutting machines. “We use either diamond-tipped blades or BACA machines which cut with water at 48,000 psi. These guys have expertise. They are so specialized that the hand polisher and the machine polisher couldn’t switch jobs.” He shook his head.

One of the polishers got up from his knees to show us his machine. “There is a huge investment of money to automate and keep production smooth here,” Holderman said.

Justin, the polisher, wore heavy knee pads and other safety items. He told me once he had met a granite slab too closely and had screws in his knees and ankles to prove it. “Worked here since I was a teenager. But those six months of recovery were the worst. Couldn’t wait to get back to my rocks.”

Granite inspires love, but also respect. Granite is hard, really hard. In fact, if you cut on granite, you won’t damage it, you’ll dull your knife instead.

Granite is also long-lasting, so choose your color carefully as that countertop could last more than a hundred or a thousand years. Even the Great Pyramid of Giza contains an enormous granite sarcophagus from 2580 BC.

You could visit the Pyramid to see that granite if you wish, or you can go over to Pierceton where Holderman can help you choose your own ancient history to own in a few weeks.

Know of an interesting place or person which you’d like to see featured behind the scenes someday? Send an Shari Benyousky an email at [email protected].