It all starts with a stone...

It’s been 3 months since we re-opened our quarries after temporarily closing due to lockdown. Since then, we have been busy working on orders and trying to get used to what is now the new “normal”. If you follow any of our social media platforms or even just check out our website from time to time, you will know we love to share photo’s of our finished orders especially when we get photo’s from customers of the final products in place but each of those orders takes time, patience, skill and an entire team working together at each stage to make it possible. With that in mind, we thought we would give you a wee look behind the scenes at what our team does at each stage of the production process.

Every order starts with a stone but before we can start processing the stone, our quarry team needs to first extract it. Different quarries use different techniques to initially extract the raw material like blasting and drilling but the technique we use is breaking. After we have broken through to the highest quality Caithness flagstone, we then cut each layer out individually. It is then up to our quarry team to sort the layers ready for the next stage – Splitting.

Each layer of stone splits differently and some can be split more than once! It is the job of our quarry team to know how each layer splits and then organise the newly split stone ready to be picked and processed.

Now the real fun begins! Paving orders are processed on our specially built production line. Each member of the production line team has a specific job and each is as vital as the last. Once the paving comes to the end of the line, it is stacked on pallets according to size and thickness. Other orders like hearths, worktops and flooring are made in our on-site workshop. Using a combination of modern machines and traditional hand techniques, the workshop team take the raw flagstone and can perform 6 different processes or more before they reach the final product. This can include cutting, additional splitting, polishing and edging just to name a few!

Finally, the newly finished products are checked and carefully packaged before leaving our quarry and heading to our customers. All that is left is for us to wait (impatiently) to see the end results!

All these different stages and processes take patience and time especially as every product that leaves us has been specifically made to order. We haven’t even mentioned all the awesome work our office, accounts, sales and marketing teams do! With added precautions to keep our team safe and our temporary closure, we have had some longer lead times than usual and can’t thank all of our customers enough for their support and patience, it makes all of the hard work the entire Norse Stone team does all the more rewarding.

So whilst we continue to extract, split, cut, split some more, polish, edge, check and pack all of our orders, make sure you continue to check out our other blogs including our finishes guide and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and if you have any photo's of our products in place, make sure to send them to us!