1. Thin-film stone techniques

1.1 Materials

Natural stone is a product obtained by digging in quarries or by cutting, then transformed by a machining process.

Each stone inherits a long geological past, shaped as it is in the bowels of the earth: some in the bubbling of magmas, others in processes of deposition and consolidation; still others forged by heat and pressure in the roots of a mountain range.

The following groups of materials are considered natural stone:

• magmatic or igneous rocks: rocks formed by the cooling and solidification of magma; for example, granite, basalt, diorite, porphyry ;

• sedimentary rocks: rocks formed by the deposition (usually in water) and consolidation...