State Shaped MArble Cheese Platters
Novelty cheese platters in the shape of various states. A super simple project, but it makes a great gift. States I've done include: California, Oklahoma, Virginia, Connecticut, and a New Hampshire. One day, I think it would be fun to make a cheese board for every state at the same scaling factor so I could nominally recreate a map of the contiguous US, maybe with stone or marble that is endemic to each state. Someday....
Required Resources: 1 hours, $10 each
Size: ~9" x 9" x 1"
Materials: Marble Slab
Finish: Polished
Tools: Water Jet, Laser Cutter
New Techniques:
Water Jetting Marble: I was staying late one night at Otherlab when a co-worker came in with a 3 foot by 3 foot slab of Carrara marble he had transported back from a vacation in Europe. He wanted to cut a coffee table top out on the water jet but didn't know how to use the machine. I did and naturally offered my assistance even though I had never cut stone or marble before. There's a first time for everything, I guess. After a small test cut, I figured out what I thought would be the best settings. I crossed my fingers and set the machine in motion. It worked out! As a thank you for helping him out, my co-worker gave me the off cuts, which were enough to make the California cheese platter. I quite liked the way the whole piece turned out and went to a store in the Bayview that sold marble slab. I haggled a bit with the salesman and ended up buying part of an old white marble counter top for $50. I've been cutting hunks out of this slab for gifts for several years and it looks like I have enough to last me a few more.
Lessons Learned:
Long Lead-in and Low Pressure Cutting: Cutting marble on the water jet is a whole different animal than cutting metal or wood. For starters, marble is extremely brittle. The water jet operates at 60,000 psi (your hose for your sprinkler is ~70 psi) and while a stream at that pressure does a great job of slicing through steel, it would shatter stone. The fix is to use the cut at low pressure setting, only 10 ksi, but run much slower. This leaves a nice clean edge except at the pierce point. The pierce point is where the water jet first cuts through the material at full depth. No matter how gentle you try to pierce marble however, there is a risk of a blow out on the back side. A blow out is a conical crater that forms opposite the pierce. To avoid a blow out on your part, you must either start the cut off the material or make your lead in (the line from thee pierce to the actually profile of your part) extra long. This way, even if there is a blow out, the blowout cone is far enough away from the final part that it doesn't effect the finish of the part.
