Digging for Large Garnet Crystals in North Carolina "The Crystal Collector"

[Music] [Music] [Music] on this crystal collector we're going to be digging up some of these huge garnets they're gonna be awesome and a fun time to go dig right out of the United States here in North Carolina at a place about half an hour above Asheville it's gonna be a lot of fun you can also check out their Facebook page and then a website sandy bottom trail rides sandy bottom trail rides is where you want to go to sign in it's a candy Fork Road what you want to do is just turn on this road and follow it down for quite a while maybe a mile or so then when you get to the end right here you just want to park and go into the office and get signed in once you get all signed in they'll give you directions to go shortly down the street to get to the entrance of the mine here you'll notice the little gem mines sign and you'll proceed to go down the creek and cross over it now you don't need any kind of special four-wheel-drive or anything I'm in a normal minivan so you cross over the creek and you proceed to go up the drive and you pull over to the right you'll see the little sign that says parking and this is where you're parking get ready to go dig for some awesome garnets this is the entrance to the mine it's only about a half mile walk up not too bad they started mining this place in the early 1800s they use different things like the talc for pencils in the steel industry and garnets for sandpaper as we get to the top here you'll see a sign that has much more detailed information on all that stuff and the rules and everything like that you look over and you'll see the man-made opening to this cave system it doesn't go too far back but it's really cool and what an adventure to come here and dig these garnets Tiffany's also use some of the garnets for Jim making for jewelry back in the 1950s so here the mine you have the entrance there but at one time many years ago they were mining some of the materials not the garnets but the mica and they brought a yard up area right here so you can go down through here and literally all that stuff right there is old dumps right from the cave so we're gonna walk over and check this out and as you're walking because this is all old tailings you're gonna be able to spot Garner's just like this one here the garnets here are really big have some really neat shapes I'm gonna get this mica over there so they really have to be polished up somehow to really show the the color and the shine that you can bring to this so we'll keep walking you can see all the little divot holes where people have been digging here and there and I always suggest to come over here you know even if you're ready to you know get into the cave and and get to work there's an impression of where one was you know you never know what you can find in these in these dump piles over here and it's a lot of times it's really easy pickings you know you really have to to look because everything kind of looks the same but once you get an eye for the shape of the garnet there's one right there it's broken in half but it allows you to see the the true red garnet color versus the the exterior is covered Michael so let's see if we can find a paper and then sometimes you can even crack open these these pieces like this you could see the little garnets are in there but there's really so many here there's just several types of ways that you can find them sitting on the hillside still in the tailings I could actually see the red coming off that one and some of these have this cool elongated shape some one like this one they have some really odd shapes here checking these water runoff it's a really good spot to find any kind of crystals at any location just like these garnets can you see it [Music] man not bad at all so I was about to go up to the main pit you know look over and saw this pretty good-sized one hanging out on the ground thought I would oh yeah this is gonna be if we can get a better view of this yeah look at that okay so we see an impression of one and then we see another one another one on that side so this one's got a little mica matrix with it sometimes you can really make these look cool with a little trimming nice those are icicles it's that cold today but I'll tell you what when you're finding garnets like this you don't really feel the the coldness Sat not one nope but it's really easy it's really really easy to find these once you get to I you know you're not gonna just come out here immediately and start seeing these things all over the place but then once you kind of get the eye you'll notice them they just have a little bit different appearance than most of the other rock oh look at that that's sweet in the matrix a little garnet there and like I say these are southern you can also just flip these matrix pieces over and give them a really good look looks like a little weird garnet there [Music] but every now and then we might just flip out a piece this happens to have a large garnet and hanging out of here's a sample of the mica schist that these garnets formed all in which makes up the really the whole entire system this one's got a really cool Sheen to it and and you can pick up as much of this stuff as you want here I believe I could stay in these dump piles all day long and have a great time but you know what let's go check out the real part of this mine where all this stuff came from just a slight walk behind me here found some nice garnets over there and maybe in half an hour digging in the tailings a few matrix pieces here some singles so you know they're still not cleaned up but once these are cleaned they look really nice they have some potential now for digging these out you don't need anything but your eyes and you know to bend over and pick them up off the surface unless you just really want to dig through the tailings but now for where we're about to go you got to have this stuff oh and you got to have a headlamp too so you want to get a headlamp maybe a couple of headlamps in case you know your one goes out I like these these rechargeable ones here they're nice and rechargeable and if you your chisels they need to be freshly sharpened first time I came up I had chisels but they weren't sharp and they just don't do anything good here you know they they won't really penetrate the wall and you know that's probably you could use a little bit bigger hammer pair of gloves if you like you want to bring your bag some water things like that you know and if you're really serious you know bring little bigger tools more water bigger bag you'll find plenty here if you put the work in okay here we are at the entrance behind me bro gonna be a fun day of digging check it out cool scenery fun times okay here we go so before I do any mining give you a tour here you can see them pretty wild walls go up then the garnet starts right in here and go all the way back they don't want you digging in these pillars which obviously makes a lot of sense cave-ins going on you can see people have even crawled up in there and dug and I'd say this cave well I don't know it's a really correct name whether you call it a cave or whatever but it goes back Oh No but in 50-foot about here we'll have to put on the headlamp all right let's check it out so you get in to the first part of this another large pillar and you can dig in any of this area not sure you're getting a really good view but just for instance check it out you can see just right there some divots or people have been digging there's a little piece of a garnet right there [Music] let's see I'll show you garnet and this you can see one there an edge of one there's a hole or someone pulled out one that looked like the size of a gumball or so you can walk up this edge here I've got to be a little careful if you'll notice they'll find these little spots where people have knocked out - put your feet in walk up [Music] and the garlic's just really go all over these walls you can just about dig anywhere in here and find garnets okay what you'll see here is they garnet strata or layer that runs through now there's other garnets and other layers but you can see there's really some really big ones that just run all the way through you see where people have been digging out of that one and you know one time they come all the way down all right as we walk further you want to keep your eye on the ground because when people are digging up on these walls sometimes you'll pull up garnet out or pop it out and it'll fall down here and you know you're not gonna feel like walking all the way down here to find it sometimes listen unless it's a really good one I've done it several times so keep your eyes out one of my favorite spots to dig you can see some really large garnets that came out of this section and this is probably where I'll keep digging today I mean that piece wasn't you know wasn't far from being a size of a baseball possibly you can see divot after divot divot after divot or just these walls are loaded with garnets so we're gonna be digging right there but if you look this vein runs all the way back you can follow it and follow it follow it follow it until you get to the very back wall this is a pretty tight squeeze though let's see if we can get here all the way to the back wall and you can see that this vein just keeps going in this okay with the very back you know you're just kidding who's going it's still there everywhere there's one right there right there you can see the edge of it yep there's a piece one there's one there's one there's one all of this really fun place to dig I'll tell you what here's what I was talking about I was about to go back and look keep your eyes on the ground here some people dig here and they don't want these small ones you know this one's kind of been split there's still got a nice no nice half so you can find all kinds of stuff somehow an acorn get in here that must be some squirrels you can see I'm at the very back and you can there's the front of the cave right there [Music] let's go grab some tools what I'd like to do is take a few tools that you're going to use sit them all down in one spot and then have your bag here so that when you get some garnets you just drop them right in your bag you know if you get some good ones you know bring some wrap you never know where you might need some wrap so you know these are pretty tough but yeah I'm sure if I find a really good one you know wrap her up do some digging okay here we are and before I just start digging away anywhere you might want to just see where a garnet might be at you know that not one yeah there's one right there so we'll dig this one out first but another way is to look at the way these things are you know if you see a lot of big ones here here here you're gonna probably find big ones there you know if you don't see many divots you might not find as much but usually in this layer they're everywhere so you know what yeah fooled me that's just a divot it was red it looked like the back of one but that was actually a divot so that's not a garnet so we'll find one just dig this layer out here we have this growth layer sometimes you can get in between them and you know pop out some sections of it so that's what we're gonna try and you know before you want to hit in any of these walls stuff's gonna fly back so you want to either wear wearing glasses or safety glasses of some type so that this stuff doesn't pop back in your eye or your face once you get it in there you can really hit it knocking it loose and you just want to take that pull it off you know you might have a garden there nothing in that one but what's really important what you might expose no garnets in there I'm just gonna keep knocking off some of this layering it's just we can expose one okay what we have is an edge of a pretty good-sized garnet you see it there right in the center all right you can see we're hitting this thing uncovered here and it looks like there's another one on the side of it so that's cool so you can have one big one and at least one more on the side I'm gonna have to loosen some more this up that was already loosened can't pull it out of there yet and you wouldn't want to really force it cuz you might damage it so you want to get as much of that exterior as you can and go around and see how I've been going around it so that you don't damage the garnets all right after more digging it's becoming more and more exposed so not quite ready to come out I'm gonna have to dig a little bit more of this out here get this thing out all right we're getting this thing more and more exposed almost got it out here I mean you can really grab the whole thing it seems like but we have to do a little bit more digging all right I believe we've got loose here there it is there it is there it is man whoo you know it's a lot of digging but it's worth it check it out that's a huge garnet it's like it's a twin it's like to garnish drew together mold it in one wow what a fine fantastic fantastic look at that so there it is there's the divot that we left pretty good sized going on you know so they're gonna be all over the place just like all these other divots see that but there was one right there there there so we just got to dig them out you're done always on the search I've already found so many garnets man what a fun time but it's starting to get a little bit dark so I think it's time to head on out so I'm gonna walk on down get to the car head home clean these garnets up maybe polish one or two and we'll show you those here in a bit I also have a couple of porta-johns here that you can use just right below the mine right off the trail here beautiful scenery then orth Carolina mountains in the background through the trees you see it really gets high right beside us here goes up and that overlooks all those mine tailings that you can walk that whole area right there full of them full of garnets really that's the best way to do it just go out there do that whole area down and I'm gonna take these things get them cleaned up maybe polish a few pull out some of those matrix pieces ended up getting a few nice big sized pieces so we'll get a picture of everything before I do any kind of polishing and then maybe polish a couple just to see what they look like you know to give you an idea of the potential of these things have and how much fun they are to dig okay so here we are and I've got some of the garnets from the dig and what I've been doing it's polishing some of the faces on this flat lap here now this is just an amateur type setup and you can see I've just got the water dripping out from the hose pipe there and you know like I say I'm by far a professional hone on doing any of this polishing but you can see before you do any kind of cleaning this has just been washed off with water you know the garnets look pretty cool they've got a lot of you know chloride mica stuff on the outside of them which some of that goes as inclusions when which gets really neat when you polish them up but here's one that I have put a little bit of polish only you know a couple of different polishing pads but you can see it's starting to shine up a little bit you know a little bit more polish work and this one will shine right up nice colors deep red but now this one could still use a little bit more polish but it's starting to really shine and show the true color of these garnets and what's neat is that each garnet has a little bit different look you know some of them have a darker red some of them are almost a black color and then I like the little mica things you know the inclusions right there they get really neat so there you go big North Carolina garnets now here's one that I haven't done any polishing at all yet so I'm just gonna do one polishing pads worth of polish on the faces that I can get to just so you can see the difference it makes so here's the bigger and better garnets of the find from the dig you'll notice a couple of them I've polished but first we'll look at these matrix pieces you can see on this matrix that I only washed it with water so you can't even really see the color but you can see the garnet and you can see the potential that a piece like that might have you know for cleaning up making something nice out of it and then the piece in the back really nice piece I slightly polished the faces just to bring the color out some so when all done it'll be a really nice piece all these other ones they're huge Garner's just huge but they're gonna have to be cleaned up you can see where the mica and the chlorite it's just all in the outer face you can see a little bit of the color through there and what's neat about these as you can see like in this one I've only slightly polished it but it's really cool this one had a double growing so you can see it doesn't take much polish to really bring out the colors and the character of these garnets this is the one I chose to really take time and focus on and get that awesome my fit chlorite inclusion super nice piece [Music] just a little bit more polish and it'll just look really excellent you can see the deep red colors just amazing what you can pull out of the ground if you just take the time to get out and dig around a little while go to some of these places so yeah if you want to dig some garnets I highly suggest little pine garnet mine North Carolina this is a really neat little matrix piece look at that the garnet is actually pretty good size but you can see the top doesn't have much mica so this one's gonna look really good when we get that polished back Wow look at that color this is a really nice one only been cleaned with water but you can see the nice little bed of matrix the more the mica chloride schist that it's sitting in huge garnet the back of it was connected to the wall kind of torn off look at that it's gonna have some great color though get that thing polished up Wow [Music] sometimes you get these elongated pieces like this they've just got a really funny long shape look at that really cool stuff I can imagine this one polished it's gonna look great you can see how dark that thing is Wow look at the color amazing just simply amazing so there you have it garnets North Carolina little pine garnet mine it's the place to be if you want to find large garnets fairly easy let's get her done you

Channel: The Crystal Collector

Views: 447,560

Rating: 4.8368945 out of 5

Keywords: YouTube Editor

Id: rwTTIaCRFBs

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2017