What Are Micro Fissures and How to Treat Them
It is a feature in natural granite that you may or may not have encountered before. Some who see them like them and others do not. However, knowing what micro fissures are is important because it allows one to decide whether it is a desirable trait or one that is unwanted. And in the event that a consumer does not want micro fissures, how can these be treated? In this short article we will answer the question, "What are micro fissures and how to treat them". In so doing, we will look at some related information regarding this intriguing trait that some granite has.
Cracking Open the Term "Micro Fissure"
We will begin our consideration of the core question by looking at what the term
micro fissure means. It is easy enough to find the definition online. Merriam-Webster.com is one source. That website defines the word fissure in a number of ways, one of them being:
: a narrow opening or crack of considerable length and depth usually occurring from some breaking or parting
But that is only part of the phrase. The other part of the term "micro fissure", micro, means "very small". So, the phrase micro fissures literally means,
very small cracks. How small is very small? Well, that varies from one stone to another. The point here is that these "cracks" are not like other cracks. They are tiny and often times do not go all the way through the stone slab.
Treating Micro Fissures in Granite
The thought of seeing a natural granite slab with a web of tiny cracks in it might give some consumers a bit of anxiety. However, these features that are common in many natural granite slabs are not usually a problem if the processors of the stone treat them accordingly.
One of the ways that stone professionals treat fissures in general is by using products and techniques to strengthen natural granite. We won't go into detail in this article about how this is done since that is not the subject of this discussion. Just know that stone strengthening is done in multiple ways and uses a number of products.
Concealing Micro Fissures
The visibility of micro fissures in natural granite is viewed by some consumers as undesirable even if the fissures are not structurally an issue due to their inherent nature or strengthening of the stone. Thus, reducing these conspicuous visible traits is often times the goal. When this is the case, treating micro fissures is done using a micro fissure treatment product.
One of the things to give thought to when treating micro fissures is the color of the granite. This is because the color of the granite slab will influence which micro fissure treatment product you will need. Since there are products for
treating light colored granite with micro fissures and dark granite micro fissure treatment products, the granite's color plays a role in the product selection process.
As we have seen in this very brief article, micro fissures are very small cracks in a granite slab that very often are not a threat to the integrity of the granite because they are superficial or the stone has been strengthened. Additionally, we saw that one of the treatments used for micro fissures are products designed to hide their visibility for cases where consumers do not prefer the visual appearance of these naturally occurring granite characteristics.
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