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Forty years ago once I started out my career all marble edge polishing was completed by hand. At this time such work is completed fully by machine but there are still circumstances where hand polishing would be a helpful skill to know.

Traditionally edge polishing was considered a separate semi-skilled trade. These polishers spent their whole working day rubbing hundreds of feet of marble edges and would develop strange physical deformities, bulging shoulder muscle groups and a thumb that might curve back and contact their own wrist had been the commonest!

The process would start once the sides to be polished had been identified, massive areas of marble slabs, as an example the cladding on commercial buildings can be laid out on large benches and sample matched. The exposed edges that required polishing maybe hundreds of feet, could be recognized and marked.

One by one every slab would be propped upright towards a bench with the sting to be polished uppermost. Just at hand would be a bucket of water, a sponge and a rag cloth.

The work was carried out utilizing varied grades of carborrundum stone blocks and to start would be a coarse 60 or 80 grit stone. This would be the longest stage of the work as the edge of the marble would have quite deep ‘wheel marks’ left by the diamond noticed blades from the cutting. The stone can be dipped into the water after which rubbed evenly up and down the sting of the slab always keeping a heavy and steady pressure on. The rough corners of the marble can be also rubbed off to create a small flat corner called an arris.

Every now and then the marble had to be dried to check on progress, this was achieved by whirling the rag within the air above the work. This is still the best way of drying large areas of wet stone by the way!

As soon as the entire wheel marks and other deep scratches have been removed with the 60 grit he would move on to the second stone, this time a one hundred twenty grit, just a bit finer than the earlier stone. This stone could be used until all of the scratches from the earlier grit had been removed fully and replaced by a new layer of finer scratches.

Polishing marble is the truth is the process of wearing down the surface with finer and finer scratches till the scratches are no longer visible to the naked eye!

This process continues through at least six totally different grits of abrasive down to a 500 or 600 grit. The ultimate stone used was a really fine block made by the polishers themselves from ultra fine carborundum mud and marble glue, and strangely called snake!

At this point the marble surface is still not highly polished. It has just a really smooth honed finish. The final stage is achieved with a hard block of felt and a cocktail of assorted polishing powders, the most commonly used had been putty powder, pumice powder and oxalic acid. One or all of those could be used wet or just damp to provide the ultimate gloss.

The obvious advantage of hand polishing is that this process does not create clouds of mud, because the work is carried out wet, This signifies that unlike dry machine polishing, there was little severe health risk to the polishers. The quality of the completed polish was also superior to machine polishing leaving a higher polish, smaller arrises and a flat surface.

Nonetheless, hand polishing is a significantly sluggish and laborious process. Machine edge polishing is much quicker, and within three or four years of the looks of edge polishing machines the artwork of hand polishing marble had all however disappeared.

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