A little over a year ago , my wife was looking for a rock tumbler to use for her polymer clay crafting stuff. We hadn’t gotten into rocks yet, but I figured we could tumble some rocks anyway. I had a rock polisher when I was a kid, and it wasn’t much more than a plastic mayonaise jar sitting on some rollers turned by a motor. How hard can that be? I was surprised at how expensive rock tumblers were.
I found that Harbor Freight had a couple rock tumblers, a single barrel model and one with a double barrel. Both were Chicago Electric brand which I think is Harbor Freights brand name. I bought the double barrel one for about $30. They asked if I wanted to buy the extended warranty, and I said no. But I had a week to come back and buy it if I wanted it.
I brought it home and my wife started polishing some of the polymer clay beads, and the belt broke within a day or two. I did a search and found this was normal with these Chicago Electric rock tumblers. I returned the tumbler, got another one, and bought the extended warranty for like $10 for 2 years.
This time the belt lasted for a week. I read that many people used sewing machine belts. So I went and bought a sewing machine belt. This lasted about a week.
One thing I tried was to make sure the pulleys were aligned to cause minimal wear. I also left the metal cover that hides the motor off, so it would get better air flow.
We started using rubber bands as belts. These lasted as long as the actual belts, and they were cheaper! A rubber band would last usually about 3-4 days. We used the tumbler to polish polymer clay beads and shells. And we were starting to use it more for polishing rocks now also.
A year and 2 days after I bought the the first one, the motor pulley disintigrated. I had bought the extended warranty so I was covered! I took it back planning to exchange it for a new one. I was thinking that when this thing finally died and was no longer covered or cheaply repaired, I would buy a Lortone or another quality rock tumbler. When I brought it in, and told the girl it died, she asked if I wanted a replacement or a refund. I said I can get a refund? She said yeah. Heck yeah! I took the refund! I got my money back for the tumbler and the extended warranty and everything! About $40 in all! I was happy to be rid of the cheap piece of junk. I started shopping for a Lortone rock tumbler!
After running my marathon in Virginia Beach on Sunday (I ran a 3:30:14 and qualified for the 2009 Boston Marathon!), we headed down to Statesville, NC on Monday, where we had hotel reservations. Statesville is only 30 minutes from Hiddenite.
On Tuesday morning, we got up, ate the hotel’s free breakfast, and then left for the mine.
The Emerald Hollow Mine opens at 8:30am, but we got there a little early. So we waited and the guy showed up to open the gate right on time. It took the guy a little bit to get set up, so we walked around looking at the rocks that were displayed. So the guy was ready to start checking us in. The guy was not in a good mood. Or maybe that is his normal mood. We got the combo permits so we could dig, do creeking and sluicing. I only rented a single digging kit since I would be doing all the digging, not my wife. With any of the permits, you get a free bucket of dirt to sluice. So we each got one, and started sluicing. It ws pretty easy to tell the buckets are filled with plain dirt with some fancy looking but non-valuable rocks seeded in. Mostly quartz. You could buy buckets with better stuff seeded in.
After we finished sluicing, we headed off to dig. There was a general area where you are allowed to dig, but we had no clue what to look for if anything. And the people there never told us what to look for for digging locations. So we just picked a spot, dug, and filled the bucket with dirt. The bucket can get heavy when filled with dirt. So we put the shovel handle through the back handle, and I took one end, and my wife took the other. Still, it is a bit of a walk. We didn’t find much except some small pieces of quartz. After multiple trips digging in different spots and not finding much, we were getting disappointed. We started talking about not coming back the next day.
Digging was not producing. We decided to try creeking, so we returned the bucket and shovel. I wanted to get a couple creeking setups, but the guy said we only paid for one. I had only wanted on digging kit, but I wanted two creeking kits. I was ready to pay for another creeking kit, but dealing with the guy was too much trouble. So we got the single creeking kit, and headed down to the creek. The creeking kit consists of a small hand shovel and a screening box.
Right away we were finding better stuff in the creek. We were finding larger nicer pieces of quartz, as well as amesthyst and some other pretty rocks that we don’t know what they are.
So now that we were finding stuff, we were now planning to come back the next day and only do creeking.
So we went back to Emerald Hollow Mine on Wednesday morning and bought only creeking permits (which would also allow us to do sluicing as well). But we paid for two creeking kits this time!
With the experience of the previous day, I decided to sift more rocks, and focus more on quality stuff. I had gotten a ton of small quartz and agate stuff the previous day. But this time I was going to look for larger more interesting stuff instead of keeping every little sliver. I dug in various locations such as in front of big rocks, behind big rocks, under rocks, in deep pools. I found stuff in each of these locations. I also found coold stuff just walking along the creek and looking for rocks under the water that looked different.
We also decided to buy a Killer Beryl/Emerald bucket for $25. We wants to be sure we at least came home with some emeralds. And we got a buch of emeralds, but they are all low quality. I am sure the rocks in the $25 bucket are worth less than $25.
My suggestion is that if you come here, just do the creeking. You may not find anything super valuable, but plan to have fun. I am sure that Kirsten from Cash & Treasures got a guided tour, and was told the best spots to dig. Most people don’t get that, or at least we didn’t.
Emerald Hollow Mine is located at 484 Emerald Hollow Mine Dr., Hiddenite, NC 28636, (828)632-3394.
* I went and checked my recording of the Cash and Treasures emerald hunting episode. I noticed that Kirsten got to dig in the area reserved for school groups. And when she was digging else where, she had a guide telling her where to dig. Is it possible stuff was planted for her to find?