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
When the rubber band belt broke on our cheap Harbor Freight tumbler, we had a load of rocks in it. These were some of the rocks we collected at the Emerald Hollow Mine in North Carolina. Mostly pieces of agate, jasper, and misc rocks. When the vintage Lortone rock tumbler came, and I got it going, we went to load the rocks into it. The first thing we noticed was that this thing was much bigger. We ended up having to add a bunch of beads into the tumbler to fill up the space. We figured out that while cool to have a large commercial type tumbler, we aren’t always going to be wanting to tumble such large loads.
So I started searching for smaller Lortone tumblers. I found the 33b which was Lortones dual barrel rock tumbler, similar to the Harbor Feight peice of junk. I also found a model “3-1.5″. In the pictures it looked like the dual barrel but with 3 barrels. And the price was about the same. I thought, what a deal, and was ready to buy one. But after reading more, I realized that the barrels are smaller, like half the size of the dual barrel model’s barrels. So I decide to get the 33b modeal withe dual 3lb barrels.
I started seaching and found prices from $95-$117. But I found a metal detector place that had it listed for $80. $80? I kept reading the page to see if I was missing something. I did a search on the company and didn’t find anything bad about them. Still $80? Why so much less than everyone else? I decided to take a chance.
The tumbler came today! It was brand new in the box, and was a Lortone 33b just as advertised! Everything these, no problems!
So I think I got a great deal. We wont get a chance to play with it until we get back from digging Herkimer Diamonds though.
I live in the Rochester area of New York state, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot gemstones to hunt around here. Apparently there is some fluorite that can be gotten at some local dolomite quarries. But I think access is limited, but they let the local rock club go in there sometimes.
One of my books (Earth Treasures: The Northeastern Quadrant) mentioned that agate could be found along the eastern bank of the Genesee River near Norton St and Avenue E. It is supposed to be in the limestone, and on the shoreline. The book also lists that labradorite could be found down by Canadice lake.
I would really like to pick up some pieces of labradorite, but we didn’t have time to get down there yet. But the place on the Genesee River was very close. I even knew the spot where they were talking about. So Sunday morning, my wife and I took a quick trip to the Genesee river. We parked on Seth Green Drive, and walked down Indian Trail to the rivers edge. We looked around, but mostly just found dull grey boring rocks. I found some gray rocks with a different smoother gray running through them. I also found what appear to be some sort of fossils. One rock I found what a little different. It was a little shade, kind of a whitish gray. I looked around on the web, and I believe it is actually silicified coral, or fossilized coral. Unless the agate is a ugly dull grey agate, we didn’t find any agate. We plan to go back. There is another area to search by taking the fishing access trail down towards Seth Green Island. We will also take a crack hammer to break a few rocks open.
Meanwhile, I am going to try get down to the Canadice Lake area to see if we can find some labradorite.
I had read about people using wedges made from old broken leaf springs from a car or truck. They had said they got the broken leaf springs for free from an auto shop. That seemed pretty easy. I decided to try a couple wrecking yards though. The first couple I called said they couldn’t help me. But then I called my favorite place which is a longer drive, and they said sure, come on down. So I drove down on Saturday morning, and they told me to go out and look in the one corner. I looked around expecting a pile of broken leaf springs. No such luck. I looked around and found a broken leaf spring on a car. All I had to do was remove a single bolt. My largest socket was just a little too small. I used a crecent wrench and got the nut off, but couldn’t get the bolt off. I work on it for a bit, but finally gave up. I did find a rusty piece of leaf spring nearby that was about 20 inches long. I kept it. I looked around and found another broken leaf spring held only by a single bolt. I put a little effort to see if I could get this off, but no. Then I stumbled over a leaf spring that had already been removed, and head to the office. The guy looked at what I had, and said go ahead and take em. Way cool! I shoved them in my car and drove home.
The tricky part was how to cut them. Spring steel is hard! I didn’t want to my sawing away with a hack saw. I went to Harbor Freight. I had thought about buying some 4 inch metal cutting disks and a 4 1/2 inch angle grinder. The disks were only a few bucks, and the angle grinder under $20 I think. But then I saw some 7 inch metal cutting disks. I ended up buying the 7 inch disks and was going to try them on my circular saw at home. That worked out great. It took a little while to cut through the spring steel, but not nearly as long as trying to cut them with a hack saw. Cut the leaf spring into pieces about 8 or 10 inches long.
I used my heavy duty Dewalt bench grinder to clean up the sharp edges of the cuts. Then I proceded to sharpen one end to a wedge point. Again, it took a while due to the hardness of the spring steel. Overall, they were very cheap with the only costs being $10 for a 10 pack of metal cutting disks (I only used one of them), and some gas to go to the salvage yard. What a deal. I may try to get another leaf spring or two. We’ll see how these work.
I have also been researching tools for the trip. I watched Cash And Treasures again, where they went to the Herkimer mines, and have been reading web sites. I already had some of the tools such as a sledge, pick axe, safety glasses, garden shovel, garden claw, etc. But I bought some more tools. It is always good to have more tools! I could rent tools at the place, but I am not sure all what they have to rent.
I made multiple trips to Harbor Freight. They are good place to buy some types of toold cheap. But alot of their tools are cheaply made, so you have to take that into account. I bought a 48″ crow bar there as well as three wood splitting wedges.
At Sears I bought a new Craftsman brand sledghammer with a fiberglass handle. It comes with a lifetime warranty. So if I break it, they will replace it. I already had a wood handled sledge from Harbor Freight, that had a shorter handle. I also bought another wood splitting wedge and an Estwing crack hammer. It was labelled as a drilling hammer, but I checked Estwing’s site, and the crack hammer and the drilling hammer have the same model number, so they are the same thing.
I bought another Estwing crack hammer at Lowes so my wife and I could both have one, and also a digging shovel. That will come in handy around the house I think. I already had a long handle shovel with a foam covered handle. But I never trust that thing. The wood under the foam in skinny, and I keep expecting it to break. I also bought a bullpoint chisel.
I had ordered an Estwing Gad Pry Bar. But the first place cancelled my order. I ordered it from another place. I had asked them if they had it in stock and they said they would check and get back to me if they didn’t have it. I never heard. A week later I called them and found they didn’t have it and couldn’t get it. At this point it was too late to try and order one from some place else. I guess I will have to do without a gad pry bar.
I even made a couple screen boxes using 1/4 inch mesh screen.