I don’t have one nearby but I imagine it can ship ground whatever the materials are maybe. He did say the acid is something that if your messy you will destroy whatever it touches. Are there a lot of stains out there for concrete?
Preparation acid is usually just muriatic acid as found in the pool Supply normally diluted 4-1 with water. But we only did this if the concrete was in bad shape
The stain comes in two main verities, acid based that reacts with the concrete to form its color and dye based that is is really just a concentrated liquid pigment. There are hundreds of colors but most manufacturers only have between 20 to 50 or so to choose from. Also how long you let it soak and how heavy you put it on, number of applications will vary the color too so really the color options are numerous. Of course though, you can only go darker and not ligher. So the darker your concrete the less options you have. If you have light or white concrete the color can come out really nice.
The dye based stains are easier to use and a little more forgiving but don't seem to work as well as the acid based stains. I normally had to put two or three coats of dye to get the color where as with acid based it was one coat or two if they wanted it darker
I liked the scolfield lithochrome chemstain the most. I got it at white cap normally.
For hardeners, there are also two main ones on the market. silicate based and the "newer" lithium based. Manufacturers of the lithium based hardeners claim that the smaller molecules of lithium can penetrate deeper into the concrete but in real world I could not tell any difference
Otherwise all of the hardeners from all of the manufacturers seemed to be the same. I believe that this technology is quite mature and there is no secret around how to harden concrete so every manufacturer can make good hardeners
I never liked using the stain and hardener in one. It gives you less open time for getting the color just right. When the hardener start working it closes off the poors in the concrete making it hard to get any more color in. Most customers where very pickie when it came to the color so have time to get it just right and signed off was much easier with the stand alone stains.
Also, dont go with any sealers that aren't burnished hardened. There are some that are wipe or spray on and that is it. Then there are ones that require high speed burnishing. The heat created during the burnishing cures the sealer. These types are far harder and longer lasting in my experience. Plus the burnishing adds an extra level of gloss
For hand grinding, which your counter will be, you should start with a diamond grinding wheel on a 7" grinder. The variable speed grinder/polisher from harbor freight worked well enough for small one off jobs but we normally used DeWalt, Bosh and Matobo grinders.
Depending on the current condition, how much aggragate you want exposed you would start with a 30 or 40 grit wheel. Or if you don't want much showing then a 60 grit wheel. After that I liked to use the Dramatic easy edge ceramic wheels. And progress up to about 200 grit before stain and hardening. Then you would want to continue grinding with resin bonded diamonds up to the desired finish. 800 grit is normally the minimum. 1500 is the norm and 3000 is high gloss.
Then seal and burnish. For a counter that will get wet, I suggest at least three seal coats burnishing each
cause we got mold behind some walls. guy that remodeld our home before we bought it did a real shit job in the bathrooms. cut corners everywhere.
