Stone, clay, glass and concrete products

EPA Office of Compliance Sector Notebook Project. Profile of the Stone, Clay, Glass, and Concrete Products Industry. US Environmental Protection Agency, 1995. 

Nonmetallic Mineral Products Industry Indexes http //minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/ imii/ (accessed July 11, 2010). The USGS has prepared leading and coincident indexes for the Nonmetallic Mineral Products Industry (NAICS 327). The former name for this industry was the Stone, Clay, Glass, and Concrete Products Industry (SIC 32) under the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. The SIC has been replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). These indexes are similar to the ones in Metal Industry Indicators. The latest report for these indexes, November 2004, is available in PDF format. Historical data for these new indexes are available back to 1948. See also the section on Statistics for a discussion on the Statistical Compendium (U.S. Bureau of Mines) and the USGS Commodity Statistics and Information. 

Stone, clay, glass, and concrete products Flat glass... 

The above few out of many available examples show that modem applications of glass, clay, stone and concrete products require use of various solvents. 

Low-grade ceramics - stone, and certain refractories - are simply mined and shaped. We are concerned here not with these, but with the production and shaping of high-performance engineering ceramics, clay products and glasses. Cement and concrete are discussed separately in Chapter 20. We start with engineering ceramics. 

Materials modification is one of the oldest subsidiary tasks of construction. Ancient man worked within a found world, selectively refining organic products such as timber, leather and bone to his use. And the early metalworkers always worked in an alchemic intimacy with nature. Fire-hardening of timber and then clay presaged the Egyptian discovery and development of glass, the slaking of lime to make an adhesive mortar and later the Roman achievement of concrete - pulverised volcanic earth that hydrates into artificial stone. 

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