Mining & Processing
Mining for granite is done manually. For drilling and channeling hand chisels and hammers are used. There are very few quarries that have mining machinery, such as compressors and drilling machines for drilling and blasting, cranes for lifting big blocks, and dampers and trucks for transport.

There are, four operations that are involved in the processing of granite. They are:

• Dressing
• Cutting/ sawing
• Surface grinding and polishing and
• Edge-cutting-trimming.

Granites are now mined in most of the Indian states for use as construction material and road metal but production of dressed granite blocks and slabs from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are highly priced. In India there are 43 granite processing units of which 12 are in Andhra Pradesh, 13 in Karnataka, 3 in Rajasthan, 14 in Tamil Nadu and 1 in Orissa.

The recovery of marketable grade granite is reported to be 32 to 40 per cent in Karnataka, 25 to 75 per cent in four quarries around Jalore, the main granite mining centre of Rajasthan, and 20 to 40 per cent in Tamil Nadu.

Sandstone is sedimentary, but unlike limestone which is shell and bones, sandstone is most famous for its characteristic. Sandstone can also contain some of the materials found in granite, which makes some sand stone iridescent and/ or hard.