If it is WM and sealed (or you can seal your sample quickly with a sealer from the hardware store), then I think you will have a good sample for testing. I have had absolutely no issues with my WM (even with the port!), and if you like the cross-cut one better, it's the same stone, so I would think it would hold up the same. WM has that stripey pattern, and the cross-cut one has a more swirly pattern. If this really is the stone you want, you might have to do some hunting. It took me a while to find a pretty slab for my island; I was looking for subtle colorations, no jaggedy crazy thick black lines. I was frustrated after a trip to the 3 stone places that my GC sent me to. So I had to figure out a better strategy. I took a whole day off work, got an after-school sitter and hit the road, visiting every single stoneyard that google gave me in the Houston area. After that I eliminated almost all of them, settling on 3 yards that seemed like someone there knew what WM was, and had a friendlyish sales person who said they would text/email when WM came in. 1 week later, there were 3 slabs of absolutely gorgeous WM at one yard, so I put one on hold for my island. Done. Well that yard did not honor my 7-day hold and sold all three slabs to someone else 3 days later. My GC was arranging the transport of the slab to the fabricator when they told him. Ugh. Fast forward 3 weeks, a friendly sales person from one of the other yards had stayed in touch with me and would email me when she learned that there was going to be a shipment on WM. She even had her buyer from Brazil email pics to her and she would forward them to me. This went on for a couple of weeks. She texted me that there were some 3 cm slabs of WM coming in. I went down to see the slabs and they were horrible, huge yucky thick black lines. Just ugly. 1 week later she said there were some 2 cm slabs that just arrived. I wanted 3 cm, but I went down to see. I found a nice 2 cm slab with subtle coloration and no big thick black lines. Now it's in my kitchen. And I didn't have to buy it from the mean stone people who "stole" by original slab. The rest of the kitchen was pretty much done by the time I finally found my WM and got it installed. So for several weeks we just used the plywood island that I asked my GC to install so that I could cook and feed the kids. River White was my next choice if I hadn't been able to find WM. Please let use know how your tests go with the sample.

wow that's good to know - didn't think about testing with coffee. I've been so pumped about finally deciding on a particular granite, then my DH comes home and says to hold off. There is a possibility that all salaried workers where he works may have to take a 20% pay cut :( he won't know until next month. Boy am I bummed, but there are so many out of work in our area that feel fortunate we are both working. Slightly OT - A close friend of ours lost his job. Too young to retire really, but he will have to in order to keep medical insurance. Anyhow we just did a laundry room remodel and we paid him to replace flooring, install cabinets etc and I was feeling guilty about spending $5-6K on countertops when he doesn't even have a job. So anyway, the project is on hold for now.

Hi Casaloma, That sounds likely that both surfaces were affected. One common scenario is that one surface gets scratched and the other one sort of crumbles. One important thing is to inspect both surfaces after you try the scratching. For example, the glass can look like it has been scratched but if you rub your finger along it, it's just a trail of powdered rock and the glass is still in good shape. So rub your fingers across there to see if the glass is truly scratched or scuffed. I agree it's awkward with a curved glass bottle. I also think that a broken edge will give you a sharper edge than a cut edge when it comes to scratching. The other possibility is that even if the minerals in the stone are hard enough to scratch glass, the rock itself make break apart as you are scratching. This has to do with how well stuck together the rock is. It sounds like this may also be a factor here. That's a cool-looking slab and I don't think it's one I've seen before, very nice!

Yes, your results are consistent with what I found when I did several rounds of testing on manufactured quartz last summer. The suede finishes seem to be pretty prone to staining. I haven't tried bleach on a suede finish, but I used it a lot on the polished ones and it didn't damage the surface and it did remove the stains. As for the scratching, yes, the quartz surfaces tend to be slightly softer than granite. I tested that over and over and found that to be a consistent result. Another consequence of that is that scrubbing or abrasives can damage the finish. I didn't end up doing any comprehensive testing on suede finishes, so I didn't write about it in any of the articles - these used polished samples for the tests. Nonetheless, the results might be helpful to you. https://usenaturalstone.org/do-engineered-quartz-countertops-stain/ https://usenaturalstone.org/got-data-testing-the-performance-of-granite-engineered-quartz-concrete-and-sintered-countertop-surfaces/