Deposits and quarries of granite

Granite is an igneous rock material widely used in the world. Due to its high hardness, strength, durability and resistance to temperature fluctuations and weather changes, it is used in construction everywhere.

Where granite is quarried

There are about 200 quarries and deposits of mined granite all over the world. It is extracted in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, India, Brazil, China and Russia. The best in the world granite is considered Indian. High quality granite is extracted in Karelia, and also in Ukraine. Nevertheless, even in such countries as Saudi Arabia, South Africa, USA, Australia, Kazakhstan have their own excellent deposits of granite.

In Ukraine there are a lot of granite quarries - more than 20, but the most famous are in Zhytomyr and Korostyshov. Here they develop extraction of gray granodiorite, gabbro, labradorite, red granite and other valuable rocks of stone.

How granite is mined in Ukraine

Granite mining is a complex technological process. Its purpose is to get a billet with a minimum number of defects and cracks.

For extraction of minerals several main methods are used:

• Direct detonation of the rock with explosives. Holes are drilled in the rock, explosives are placed there... bang and the rock is blasted away. There's a lot of waste, large portions of the splintered rock have many defects and cracks.
• The burrocline method. The workpiece is cut along the contour to a certain depth, then wedges are used to widen the cracks until the part of the rock is separated from the main massif. Minimal waste, high quality of blanks.
• "Quiet blasting" with expanding mixtures. It is used for deposits with a low degree of tensile strength. The method is similar to the burocline method, but instead of wedges the same expanding mixtures are used.
• Stone cutter. Cutting of blanks by disk and band (rope) saws with the use of artificial diamonds on the cutting edge. The method is labor intensive, but the quality of blanks is high.
• With the use of air cushion. Holes are drilled and containers of air are placed under high pressure. The method is used for the production of paving stones.

In Soviet-occupation times, when they were chasing the plans, and the next five-year plan was to be ahead of the previous one, granite was extracted in a fast and cheap, but the most barbaric way - with the use of explosives. For the most part, the explosion left a lot of waste rock, which was further processed into gravel.

The remaining larger pieces had many defects and were labor-intensive to produce and there was a lot of scrap, but the reports had nice numbers.

Nowadays, the stone-cutting method is more often used, when there is little waste and the pieces of rock have minimal damage and require minimal labor to bring them to semi-finished products in the form of slabs.

What colors and texture of granite mined in Ukraine

Granite consists mainly of feldspars and quartz, but due to various mineral inclusions has different colors and their shades, different grain and texture, which entails a change in physical and chemical characteristics. In different deposits of the country, the composition of the rock is different, so their color and grain size will be different. Accordingly, there are coarse-, medium- and fine-grained structure of the rock, which significantly affects both physical properties and its appearance. Granite with large and medium grain is more resistant to atmospheric factors, so it is more used for exterior - exterior decoration and monuments, and with fine grain - more for the interior.

In Ukraine more than twenty sorts of granite are extracted, which significantly differ in color and texture:

• The Emelyanovskoye, Leznikovskoye and Kapustinskoye deposits offer granite of red saturated color, sometimes with an orange tint.
• Gabbro is deep black and gray with a greenish tint.
• Korostetskoe deposit offers granite of red and brown color.
• Pokostovsky quarry - gray stone.
• Korninskoye deposit gives gray granite with pink inclusions.
• Labradorite of Osnykivske deposit is blue with black stone.
• Sofievsky granite offers gray-beige colors.
• Vasilievsky quarry offers brown-green granite.
• Zhezhelevsky is a gorgeous dark gray stone.
• Mezherichenskoye deposit gives brown granite with pink inclusions.

In Ukraine the most famous are Zhitomir granite deposits.