Crater of Diamonds State Park Tips, and Tricks: Beginners Guide To Hunting For Diamonds In Arkansas

hey everyone its Canton Katie from older and wiser and today we're doing a video about diamond hunting in Arkansas specifically Crater of Diamonds State Park and this is the kind of video we wish we would have had before we went think of it as a QuickStart guide there's a ton of information out there but it's really focused a lot of it and then there's a lot of it spread out what we're trying to do today is bring a lot of that and condense it into one little video so if this is the only thing you watch before you go you at least have a better idea than we did going down so we're gonna include a little information about the park a little bit about the equipment that you'll need a little bit about what to do and what to expect when you're out there and also when you get home because you're gonna bring some of it'll most likely hopefully so anyway if that's interesting to you if you're getting ready to go down or even thinking about going down a crater or diamond State Park this is the video for you stay tuned [Music] okay so you've decided to go down to Crater of Diamonds State Park the very first thing that you need to do is join the Facebook group I don't care if you're going down in a month or a year or however long join the Facebook group there are it's September 2019 right now there are about 10,000 members today and a lot of those members are gonna be newer looking for information but there's also a lot of very experienced diamond hunters down there Park regulars and people that are constantly posting and giving out all sorts of great information the Facebook group is the best place to get up-to-date information on the park where to find diamonds where they're you know what areas of the park are good locations current weather conditions recommendations for where to stay places to eat and things to do in the area so it's great there's a lot of people that are local there are a lot of people that travel there frequently so join the Facebook group get involved it's amazing the other thing I'll recommend you do is look at a couple YouTube channels or even an e DVD that are available out there right now I'm gonna mention two YouTube channels that I really like and that's diamond miner eivin's and then the Arkansas diamond miner I'll add more channels as I get them and I'll put them all in the link below so the Facebook group link the link to any YouTube channels will be below there's also an e DVD by gentleman named Glen Worthington he is very involved in the park down there very involved in the Facebook group as well very helpful gentleman I'll put the link to his website down below as well the thing that you're gonna find by joining that Facebook group is that it is a community a real community of people that have pulled together with this common interest and they're also super helpful you're gonna see a lot of posts from people like us new people people that have been down there asking questions what do I expect posting pictures of their finds is this a diamond is this Jasper is this something else that's very informative and a lot of the park regulars will occasionally post lots of pictures of their diamond finds and they'll give you tips and tricks on how to identify a diamond so let's talk about the park itself there are lots of places to stay around town and if you need that the park has a campground which is fantastic we did a little video that showcased the town and the park a little bit I'll put that link up above and down below so you can check that out if you want to there are lots of hotels lodges other campsites around plenty of places to eat plenty of things to do real quick Cato be mad at me if I don't plug Hawkins variety store great place to get sandwiches and dessert and just other other little things they've been around forever a really good local place right there and in the square as you come into Murfreesboro at the park itself you'll walk into the visitors center and they'll have a gift shop on one side and then on the other side you get a little Museum and some displays on on the history of the park which is great you can also rent your equipment there I'll talk a little bit later in the video about what equipment you'll need but by all accounts the equipment that they rent is pretty good some people don't like the wagons but if you don't have one you don't really have another another choice unless you're gonna be hauling buckets around equipment prices are pretty reasonable admission is pretty reasonable right now I would check the park website for all the latest prices but right now admission is $10 for adults that's any 112 and over 6 to 12 is $6 and kids six and under are free or under 6 are free and that's for a day now when we went down there they have this deal where if you went you bought your admission the last hour of the day then it was good for the entire next day as well so let's talk about what to expect when you get out to the field you'll walk through the doors at the visitors center you go down a ramp and then there's a little lower area there that's got the equipment rentals some examples of diamonds they even do a few tutorials throughout the day and they'll let you know when those are there's also the desk down there with the park employees that will help you identify some of the gems and I'll tell you now we and we don't mean to disparage anyone but they're not certified gemologist they do go through some training from what we understand they're very helpful they're very knowledgeable but they they've been known to make some mistakes so don't leave anything at the park they have a little bucket there you can find glass at the park they have a little bucket there that you can dump your glass in don't because sometimes it may actually be a diamond at least take it all home and check it out yourself first post it on the Facebook group take it to a local gemologist whatever just make sure that you're keeping everything just in case so when you get out there you'll walk down the path and there'll be the wash station to the left that's kind of your cleanup station for when you're done if it's muddy out there and then they'll be it's kind of separated into a few different sections and it's their dirt paths and it's a it's a rough terrain so there are furrows there and that they they dig up there you know when they plow the field so it's pretty rough terrain you're gonna want sturdy shoes there's not a lot of shade so a good Sun Hat sunscreen and any kind of you know if you have a little portable umbrella or something like that that would be good for you too we actually recommend going out in the morning digging up your dirt and then bringing it in in the afternoon during the heat of the day to the wash stations work because those are covered and you've got the water there and and if there's any breeze at all it feels okay as far as the equipment you'll need you'll definitely want some buckets they rent three gallon buckets at the park you can also find these 5-gallon buckets and a lot of your like Walmart's or home-improvement stores we got ours from Lowe's and we got two with lids just so that when we brought stuff home we could you know keep them sealed up and then I would say you wouldn't need too many we went down with about 10 buckets kind of overkill you'll want you know two or three buckets maybe to fill with dirt and then at least one bucket to carry your your anything that you're coming home with and much more than that I think you'll just find you won't use it just because you're probably not going to fill six buckets of dirt and then take it to the wash station I already mentioned you're gonna want sturdy shoes sun protection things like that the other thing that you're going to want is some gloves we picked up these gloves at one of the gardening stores they worked out pretty good for us they've got a thick rubber and it's texturized so these are our waterproof except for the top but these these do dry pretty quickly but when you're when you're digging in there there's a lot of rocks and sharp things like I said there's glass too so you definitely want to protect your hands make sure you have gloves even when you're using your shovel right I mean gloves help protect your hands so make sure you have a good pair of gloves with you - speaking of shovels we found these little foldable shovels have been great I think they are about 12 or 15 bucks on Amazon this one came with a pouch and see it folds up nice and compact it's got a serrated edge pull it apart and it's just a little hand shovel this is perfect for digging what what you want to dig out of the park and then holding back up when you're ready to go home plus now we can use it around the house you'll most likely want a wagon of some sorts they do rent them at the park they're not the best from what we've heard we didn't actually rent one we brought our own and we used Malcolm's little Radio Flyer foldable wagon and that worked out okay it has the the good kind of off-road chunky tires for the terrain but it has soft sides so we had stuff kind of falling out when it would start to lean a little bit whatever you bring down make sure it's got the bigger thicker rubber chunky tires because it is there's really nothing paved once you're out there on the field and you're going over some pretty rough terrain so the little plastic wheels on a kid's wagon they're just not going to cut it you're just pretty much going to be pulling that thing along rather than you know kind of dragging it through the dirt rather than having it following you on on wheels some people use wheelbarrows and that's fine too if you have a good wheel barrow you want to bring down a lot of people recommend the gorilla carts we have a gorilla cart here at home those are great but we just didn't have the room to bring it with us these little kneeling pads are great especially if it's dry out there at the park the the conditions get really tough that the ground is hard and rocky so these little foam kneelers that you can pick up at the garden stores for a couple bucks are definitely worthwhile and then really the most important thing or one of the most important things you're going to need our screens we purchased this nine set of circus on Amazon I think it was about eighty or ninety dollars and we did so because we're gonna be doing this a lot not only the diamond mining down in Arkansas but we're gonna go search for gems across the u.s. and we figured we might as well go ahead and buy our own set so that we didn't have to keep renting them from different places by all accounts the ones at the park are good you can rent them there check the website for for prices there's also a local seller down there on your way down to the park you'll see his homemade sign it'll say diamond screens for sale a lot of people in the Facebook group say that they bought from him and they're very good quality and a reasonable price this stores in town also sell the different screens and stuff now there's three main methods that you're going to use for searching for diamonds down there there's gonna be serpent searching try sifting and then wet sifting I will tell you we spent most of our time dry sifting and we regretted it we felt like we wasted the first day and a half doing it it was fun it was interesting to do and I think it's something that you know it's it's neat if you want to just get that experience or kind of keep the kids busy with something basically what what dry sifting is is you'll stack your your Saru Chris or your screens on top of a bucket these screens actually fit on top of the five and three gallon buckets which is another great feature about them but you'll have them in you know in in descending order for so you'll have a the bigger screen and then they'll gradually get lower you dump your dirt in the top and you shake it things don't fall through and then you check the different pans to see what you've got so it's fun but really kind of slow and cumbersome and then you don't really clean the stuff off and you don't really get a good glimpse of what you're what you're looking for it's harder to spot the diamonds the second way is surface searching that's a great way to spend a little time like you said you can get out there for the last hour of the day if you buy your ticket and then you have the whole other day for the same ticket and you can do some surface searching there have been a lot of significant diamond finds through surface searches so don't discount that and basically what surface searching is is you you walk along and look down at the surface look for things that look different look for things that are shining or glinting in the Sun you know poke around but you're not really digging dirt you're not really processing you you're just kind of seeing what's what's laying out there so that's definitely a way to go but the wet sifting is what seems to be the most productive way and the way most of the regulars find their diamonds so diamonds are heavier and they'll fall towards the bottom wherever they are so if they're coming down the field and they're getting washed away by water from a good rain or whatever they'll follow the the furrows and then you know maybe as the water takes a bend or goes down a hill they'll kind of shuttle in a certain place and you'll see in those furrows that there are places where they're caved in and that's where you you really want to focus on from what we were told and what you're really looking for is gravel the diamonds will settle down into the gravel so you're not looking for big chunks of dirt or anything like that you really want that gravel and that's what you'll collect into your buckets so go out find your gravel check the facebook group for the the places right now the e-string is one of the better places to be looking but that it could change so definitely check the Facebook group for that anyway you want to grab your gravel put it in your bucket take it up to the wash station and then do a wet sift and once you're done with that wet sifting you'll have what they call a center and that Center is all the heavier stuff that has collected which will be like your diamond and any other interesting gems and you can poke through that while you're there but scoop it up put it in your bucket and take it home and you'll be able to go through it later so that was how we spent the last half of our last day and we got so much great stuff we still haven't found a diamond we're still going through some of our centers though so we holding out hope but we did find some very interesting things including what we think is a petrified bug head so that was a weird thing Katie thought it was an alien so we actually did a little tutorial on how to properly wet sift and find your centers while we were down there at the wash station we were fortunate enough to meet one of the regulars his son and they were kind enough to give us a tutorial so we took that knowledge and and recorded it and we'll share that here with you we'll check it out you basically you want two screens one's got a bigger bigger screen and the other ones smaller so you'll stack them take some of your dug dirt shake it out a little bit and then you're just gonna wet like this basically you want to wash all the dirt off when the smaller stuff fall through yeah I've been picking out big chunks of quartz yeah pictures the courts here decide uh-huh and then this is where the the real stuff comes in yeah you want to do the sifting thing and you want to get some of this dirt all right and then so the thing is cuz the diamonds and the fun so far heavier you want to get them to fall to the center so you do a back and forth until you make kind of a loaf and then tap underneath and rotate it make another load rotate make another loaf and say supposed to do that about five or six times if you did it right you have what they call the pie you flip it over you know it's a little bit towards you that keeps it from spreading I guess and then in the center of your pie that you flip should be all the good stuff I don't have you stuff yep and then they say to look through it keep that Center take it home let it dry out like on a baking sheet or something look again yep all right let's see if we can do it a second time oh yeah there's our center right there and now here's Katie to give you an overview of what to do when you get those centres home so what do you do when you get home from the park and you have your bucket of centers you dry them out the reason that you dry them out is because when everything is wet it all looks shiny so it all looks a little bit like a diamond we have read that putting a baking sheet with a thin layer in the oven can dry them out I found that the fastest way to do it was to put the thin layer on the cookie sheet and then set that outside in the direct sunlight clearing it up in an hour maybe two so after that you want to look through what you have for anything shiny now I use this fantastic lit magnifying craft light it clips anywhere it's wonderful we'll put a link to it in the description so I've already looked through this particular Center you know we just do pour a cup at a time out but I found some that I missed last time so here's a piece of quartz now I've been saving the quartz because we didn't find any diamonds and the quartz is pretty and I'll be able to do something with it there's a lot of things that you can find at Crater of Diamonds State Park you can find diamonds yes yellow white and brown you can find calcite now calcite looks a lot like quartz when it's wet but when it's dry it gets kind of chalky or you can find course which will also looks a lot like diamonds you can also find glass again looks a lot like diamonds so does amethyst so we have found everything except diamonds in addition to the diamonds the quartz the amethyst and all that you can find Jasper you can find full skulls I've been told also raw garnet now we were told that the raw garnet is magnetic if you have a rare earth magnet you can get these on Amazon we borrowed this from a neighbor and we did find a couple of these little tiny magnetic rocks now they could be garnet sure or they could be pieces of antique square head nails which you can also find out at the park so there's a lot of different things that you can find I use these tweezers to retrieve rocks they say how to do that but it made it a lot easier for me also handy to have is this jeweler's loupe now this one is fantastic it has a little carrying case so we can take it anywhere you have a flashlight here so that makes it super duper easy to take a look at you know anything that you may suspect is a diamond also this one has a backlight now we read somewhere that up to 30% of diamonds will glow blue under a blacklight so obviously we haven't found any diamonds so we haven't been able to test that theory but we'll include a link for that also below I did want to mention when you're out in the field take a small container that has a lid with it that way if your surface hunting and you find something that you think may be a diamond or even when you're going through your centers at the wash station you can just quickly put it in there and then have it looked at before you leave the park always take everything home with you don't throw your glass away or anything like that you want to make sure that you bring it all home and look at it when it's clean and dry all right everyone I hope that you enjoyed the video I hope it was helpful tried to keep it quick but informative you can definitely get more in-depth information from a lot of the resources that I've linked below the Facebook group the YouTube channels the e DVD bye mr. Worthington there's just tons of information out there we were overwhelmed with all of it which is why we created this video we just wanted to give people a quick overview right quick overview what to expect and then if you want to delve deeper in for more information there's plenty of resources out there for it we'd appreciate it if you give the video a thumbs up if it was helpful to you consider subscribing to our Channel we've got lots of stuff we've got our travel vlogs we've got a lot of how to's like this one tips and tricks and things we've learned along the way and leave us a comment below let us know how we did if if we got something wrong let us know we will share that information we'll update the video or the comments because we're not experts we understand that we're just trying to give people a quick overview so anyway thanks for watching everyone and we'll see you next time

Channel: Blackberry Hill House

Views: 101,588

Keywords: older and wiser, diamond mining, crater of diamonds, crater of diamonds state park, diamond hunting, how to find diamonds, arkansas diamond mine, digging for diamonds, arkansas state park, diamond hunting in arkansas, mining for diamonds, rock hounding, crater of diamonds arkansas, finding diamonds, wet sifting, diamond mine, arkansas state parks, digging for diamonds in arkansas, digging for diamonds crater of diamonds, rockhounding usa, crater of diamonds state park tips

Id: LgjkVNGGY08

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2019