It is deteriorating because it was taken out of its natural environment,
deep underground.  The best way to preserve marble is to leave it
underground.  I don't need no petrographer to tell me THAT.  I hope I
haven't put too many petrographers out of work by this analysis.  Please
don't tell the petrographer union where I live.  Ruth


At 8:48 AM +1100 3/27/12, David West wrote:
At one level, to keep specialist dimension stone petrographers earning money!

At another level, to make consultants feel like they know what is happening
with the deteriorating stone which is being evaluated.  But as Ruth said,
old stones are old.

Personal perspective, having started my career in a specialist dimension
stone testing laboratory, and moved outwards into the bigger world,
hopefully with a slightly broader perspective:  there are times when
testing is done because people think testing should be done.  Then there
are times when you know something strange is happening, but you don't know
why, and the implications of taking an action can be enormous, so you want
to try and pin down just exactly what is going on (or at least more
accurately).

This time round, it is the latter situation.  Large building, lots of
marble, know it is deteriorating, but not sure why.  Implications of some
proposed actions are big dollars - so worth investing some money on testing
to see if we can pinpoint the mechanism better, thus possibly being able to
take a different (= cheaper) approach to repair / conservation.

PS  Thanks for the (re)commendations.

Cheers

Regards

David West

-- 
Ruth Barton
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Dummerston, VT

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