Page 12 - SparHawk Maine Tourmaline

Crystal held to the sun
weekend were excavated. Trays were brought out, lined with white towels; larger choice crystals were pulled out and set into the trays. Smaller crystals and pocket material went into white five-gallon buckets. Today the quan- tity of crystals coming out was simply coming too fast to sort. Everything (choice pieces, large and small crys- tals) was rinsed quickly, examined, and then tossed into the waiting five-
gallon pails.
It’s now 4:35. Here is some of what was observed over the next two
hours. Jeff is working on the left side of the pocket. He’s perched on a 20o-30o sloped surface. His right foot is outstretched, braced on pocket rubble. His left leg is partially tucked under him. He’s sitting on a sloping slab of wet, purple-lavender-colored lepidolite. His back is toward the wall. He has a hose in his left hand. A generator and water pump are hum- ming in the background. A steady stream of water shoots out of the hose, He’s melting his way through the block of white clay. As he does, the clay dissolves, mixes with the water, It looks like skim milk flowing down in this stream, loosening the crystals and pocket material. In Jeff’s position, he’s sitting slightly to the left of the stream and at times he’s partially in the stream he’s creating. It’s an ideal location from which to reach as he leans into the pocket area about 3feet long, 1.5 foot wide.
The space that he’s working in is tucked into the mine wall. A blast the day before had removed the over burden and opened the left and right side of the pocket so that the interior is open to the sky, making it easily viewed by the ten people in attendance.
This is a textbook-perfect arrangement for this small group of ten peo- ple to be able to view this excavation unfold. To create this ideal viewing opportunity, Jeff had to be amazingly precise with his dynamite. This is something to think about. Gold dust is worth as much as a gold nugget. Tourmaline dust is worthless. A gem miner has to move slowly, deliber- ately, carefully. He has to read the rock right - to sense what he cannot see and as he gets close, to use ever smaller charges of dynamite to move rock, use hand tools, and then hope for the best. Gem mining history has too many stories of miners who were heavy on the dynamite finding only col- ored dust. This River of Gems Pocket was beautifully presented.
I’ve often been puzzled by some of the descriptions of pocket material and what in addition to tourmaline is present as precious gems are recov- ered. We have on display several mineral specimens showing tourmaline embedded in solid rock and I’ve seen this at various Maine mine sites where crystals are removed, breaking apart the rock matrix using flat-
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