How to work on solid granite?

[Fred]

Ok I've done marble and granite tiles but now I like to move a notch up and do solid 3/4" thick granite slabs. Cutting straight line with my wet saw is no problem but I couldn't figure out what the best hand tools needed for cutting/polishing the sink under mounts and doing the edgings. I've seen wet diamond routers for the edging but don't know where to buy them - not a HD or Lowes item, they don't even know what I'm talking about. I know this is not a typical DIY job but I have enough projects to justify new hand tools/toys.

[Charles Spitzer]

look into tooling for doing headstones.

this is a good one:

[Sacramento Dave]

special edge shapers and bits. massive diamond saw. But the actual installer said there are some guys that fabricate it their garages with skill saw and grinders with diamond blades. I would think if your just wanting to do your own kitchen. It would not be worth the cost. Then there is the experience factor, It has been known to shatter during an installation.

[Murray Peterson]

"Fred" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

The crew that installed my countertop used nothing more than right-angle grinders with a selection of polishing pads, a cutting wheel (dry), and a grinding cylinder:

also had a huge shop vac to keep the dust level down, a bunch of specialized lifting gear, and huge amounts of epoxy with coloured pigments to match the granite.

A crew of five people took almost six hours to install my countertop (including the sink cutout and finish chamfering/polishing of the edges). After watching them, I never want to try this on my own -- those guys were

*good*. They were also strong -- the largest piece of granite weighed almost 800 pounds.