I took Friday off from work for a long weekend. We left home about 8am and got to the Crystal Grove Mine about 11am. We checked in, dumped some stuff off in our cabin, and headed of to the mine. There were already people out working. There were several mining sites to choose from, but the manager recommended the Tears of Wenedi location. I had read good things about this location on the web.
I had bought all my tools with me (sledges, shovels, claws, wedges, chisels, and crack hammers). I debated about the screen boxes. I ended up throwing one of them into the trunk.
I headed straight to the wall with visions of splitting off sections of rock and exposing vugs filled with Herkimer Diamonds. Two guys were already working on the wall with hammers and wedges. I found another place with a crack to work on. I worked on splitting off some rock only to reveal moer rock. Actually the first thing I did was to bash my hand with the crack hammer and take some skin of. It bled for a long time before finally stopping. The two guys broke off a lot of rock over the weekend!
After my attepts to break off chunks of rock proved to be non-productives, I tried breaking up smaller chunks of rock with the crack hammer looking for hidden vugs. I didn’t find much this way either. Occasionally I would find a chunk of rock with Herkimer Diamond attached to the rock. But when I attempted to break it off, or break the rock in the a smaller display piece, I usually succeeded in destroying the Herkimer diamond.
My wife had the dog on a leash, and sat over in the soft dirt digging. She found some stuff.
My next strategy with to walk around and just look for diamonds laying exposed on the ground. I found some this way, and it was a lot easier than breaking rocks.
Then I met a guy named Dave who was having luck using a screen box. He would collect a bucket of dirt, and then sluice it in one of the mud puddles on the mine floor. I tried this, and it worked very well. I found lots of shards, and some nice little whole diamonds as well. I collected my dirt from different locations. The most productive turned out to be below where the two guys were busting off chunks of rock. We asked them persmission to collection dirt along the the wall where they were breaking of rock, and they said okay. As I said, I found a lot of stuff this way. I kept the shard figuring that my wife could use them for her crafting stuff. I also found many pieces of calcite and rocks with what I think are dolomite crystals. I even found one little green rock that looked like some of the low quality emeralds we got in North Caraolina. I kept it. I seriously doubt it is an emerald though. After two days of collecting the quartz crytals like this, I was very sore. I also collected some small display type pieces of rock with exposed herks attached to them. I figure I will clean them up. Maybe keep one of them on my desk at work. I can give some away as gifts.
I would like to go back again sometime, and actually work on splitting off chunks of rock. I learn a lot about how it is done by watching the two guys do it.
Crystal Grove is located at 161 County Highway 114, St. Johnsville, NY 13452. Their phone number is 1-800-KRY-DIAM. They have a website at: http://www.crystalgrove.com
