Found Beautiful Agate GEMSTONES while digging in a private quarry.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well hello everyone dan here with dan her prospecting here welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome i hope to earn your subscription today i am here on a two-day agot hunting expedition seeing if i can get into some of my agate claims and looking for some new ones unfortunately the first one i went to is all snowed out hopefully i get into the next one a little easier so wish me luck and i hope you enjoy [Music] yeah so without chains on the truck i don't want to push these snowed in roads too far they do get very icy this time of spring with the thaw and freeze overnight and i don't want to find myself in a place that i can't get out of or worse yet slide off a dangerous embankment or something like that so i've come you know nine tenths of the way into my paxton valley claim and unfortunately the road just got to the point where it's not safe to go any farther so gotta leave this one a couple weeks before i can get into it unfortunately there was a new spot just up the road that i wanted to check out guess it'll have to wait my next claim should be a lot easier to get into let's go see hmm i think i have to back up a long ways to turn around so site two was a little dicey to get into but we got in i have the quad if i have to unload and drive a quad in but it's nice when i can drive the truck directly to the site and here i am let's go see what i can find so my extraction tools of choice today for extracting these agates a small screwdriver for delicate work a small sledge hammer a couple different chisels with hand guards don't break my hand today um a clawed hammer i like the clawed hammers because they can really rip through material with the claw part and of course the battery powered chisel demolition hammer and i prefer the pointed chisel rather than the blade chisel throw those all in a backpack and start hiking in now the first spot on this claim that i want to go to is on quite a steep slope i had the kids here last year and i didn't want to bring them to this spot because well one slip and goodbye child so i took them to a safer spot but i feel i feel confident enough of my stability that i can work on this slope i see the spot right down there well here we are this is the dig site right here and as i walk up to it i see my first surface find actually two of them that one's not much of an agate but that is a beautiful agate someone probably me missed that in one of their previous digs and left it sitting on the surface got these little guys that are around it as well and into the bag they go now before i get digging let me show you the translucency on this just gonna use my little old light my pocket o light that i always have with me put it on there you can see the translucency of these agates sometimes if you're lucky you can even get an idea of what's inside whether it's like flat banding iris banding crystals inside agates is always a mystery you never really know until you cut them open but sometimes you can get an idea with the flashlight and i do carry the i3t olight flashlight in my pocket wherever i go because you never know when you need a good pocket flashlight that is really really bright there's an affiliate link in the bottom of my video for olight here's one still in the rock and you can see this one is would be known as actually a egg geode because it's hollow inside though it's very very thin and fragile this one won't turn into anything special [Music] i dug myself a nice stable perch down here so i can sit on a place that's uh steady i don't have to strain myself constantly trying to hold on to a a sloped surface so now i got a flat spot to stand on and now i'm gonna work this hillside right here and see what's hiding surf is fine okay gotta get this one on camera so as you saw from the time lapse i was just picking away at the rock here and normally when you break basalt rock that's what the host is here it showers into this jagged jagged stuff the way you tell that you found an agate is all of a sudden you find a rounded smooth surface that there is a nice large agate down underneath all this jagged basalt i'll start chipping away at the basalt to see if i can get that nice egg it out now as i was just getting the camera over here i see there's also one right there this one seems to be a calcite nodule rather than an agate nodule and that's why it's sort of shattered on one side in these little square blocks because that seems to be calcite hopefully that one's agate let's get these out there's another big one right beside it i'm into a little cluster of them oh and a little guy right there too i'm on it [Music] you can tell the agates because they are little round balls in what otherwise is just a jagged mess of rock see the this one i broke a little bit of banding on the bottom mostly just gray what i like it those small ones go into my uh golden gem dirt bags beautiful beautiful agate it's a bit dirty but let's see if it passes late oh yeah as i said you never know what you're gonna find inside your agates this was a surface find here when i flipped it over it was a geode a crystal geode geode means it's got a hollow inside so it's egg it on the outside little tiny quartz crystal druzy inside the geode cute little thing there's another one nice rounded surface in amongst all the jaggedness indicates there's an egg it there okay again it's a calcium nodule not an egg that's why it broke like that and calcium doesn't make a very exciting nodule not like egg [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this started out as a great looking little spot with with one good agate a few small ones but unfortunately most of them i'm finding right now are calcite nodules not agate nodules calcite nodules don't make into anything they just crumble they're they're no good so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use this flat that i've created here as my next perch and i'm going to work up there i do remember last time i was working here i got a bunch of good ones from right up there so maybe i'll get some more and within seconds of digging in my new spot a really really nice egget and this one is egget you can see it's chipped on one spot there it's definitely egg it there we go this spot might be better got a big chunk of hillside coming here this rock's moving that rocks moving that rock's moving this will expose something before it goes anything on the front nope let's see what she's got behind okay i see this is a telltale sign and this is something you want to look for when you're uh hunting agates when you pull rocks out if you see a hollow or a void or uh concave sort of the inverse of an agate it means it left an egg down there in the hole i see it and i break up these bigger rocks because often these bigger rocks still have agates inside them okay this is the other thing see there's another but that i believe was a bubble not an egg because i don't see an egg that just fell out of there some of the bubbles don't fill in with agate material and end up just being bubbles in the rock unfortunately the egg that was in the bottom was just wasn't an egg it was a calcite nodule so far that's the story of my day on here i thought this one was gonna be good i'll put the camera back on if i see anything new well there's something exciting there's a nice big one anyway no it's agate because it broke and you can see the egg it nice and right beside that one there's another one you can tell by the roundedness another nice big one let's get her out of there i need my screwdriver so i get the chisel there it is nope that's an egg that is definitely an egg nodule one very nice egget nodule it wasn't actually broken it's that the pocket that filled in at some point had cracked and split so half the pocket was up half the pocket was down and then it filled in with agate after the fact and this is what the result is that will definitely go in one of my egg bags there's one that just popped out well it didn't pop out it's still in the rock but popped up and showed let's put the light on that one for you to show you what it looks like when it's still in host there it is the glowing egg [Music] nice [Music] [Applause] there's one that just popped out let's have a look at it oh yeah here's a nice one it's even bigger i got the next rock off behind it went way back into loose way back into the rocks get this out of here weird shadows here with this tree above me oh come on you this might be the nicest one of the day so far oh yeah baby oh yeah that is a honker nice ken again won't be able to tell what's inside that until we cut it open and find out i just saw a really big socket really big socket come out in this rock and i see it up there socket egg it oh it's loose oh calcium ah foiled again [Music] now this one's not calcium split this rock open to two and on both sides two halves of the same agate seems to have some banding in it it's got some sort of inclusion way inside there too there's there's definitely a gemstone in that one oh it was a huge honker look at that together they were like that but it was so big when the rocks split even though eggots are tough it split right through the middle of the agate so it split with the rock there's some really neat banding some sort of inclusion in there that would make a nice gemstone and a bit of iris banding as well flat banding and irish banding cool where i found that one just picked out this one meaning that the outside edge has green on it or weather's green but that again is a beautiful agate so before i threw away this rock that just came out of the hole up here i gave it one good whack with the bag the big sludge to see what was inside and sure enough good thing i didn't throw it away it was hiding a nice one oh a very nice one look at the size of that guy oh it broke uh it is agate though with long skinny banding in it and it was two bubbles that filled in that were attached very cool it's got a camera just in case he does the same thing nothing yet oh there's one that just popped out [Music] i see part of it socket must have been in there somewhere oh there it was right there there's another little guy that popped out just little ones yep she's a big one [Music] looks like it was hollow on the back side and just the crust broke off but the front side seems solid means it might be a hollow geode inside though in the main body of it okay carefully break off the outer skin of basalt we have just a fractured chunk of basalt that's all agatized on the back so that's all just a mass of egg and basalt altogether and then the one big [Music] one big egg here's the three big eggs i pulled out of that basic one spot right there haven't used the electric chisel at all haven't needed to another honker oh she's loose already pull her out of there oh there's a beauty banded one banded with clear agate and white opal a lot of these agate nodules also come with opal in them here's another nice banded agate bands of white opal running through the agate [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i've got the time-lapse camera on me right now but i got to pull out the close-up to give a shot of this one look at the size of that beast that was in that boulder pulled that boulder over just start breaking it up and there's a beautiful one nice what the heck did i find here i have no idea it's like a big massive again it doesn't seem to be a nodule but it seems to just be you know oh chunk oh agate really neat it's starting to rain and the road was treacherous on the way in so i'm wondering if i should head out of here and go to the next site because i do not want to get stuck in here because of slippery muddy roads i'll make that decision in a second well tiny little geode in that it has a tiny gap of crystals in the center cool i love how these bigger ones just jump out at me pull the rock out of here and pull you can see it so easily nice big one in here it'll take a bit of chiseling to get it out and there it's loose it is loose it moved it's somewhat loose [Applause] oh loose but not it's moving there we go there it is definitely egg it inside you can see where that little nodule right there broke off the side of it and it's egg it another big one and a little one now a few minutes ago i was thinking that i have been really lucky today i haven't you know put the chisel straight through an egg it yet i shouldn't have thought that because i just did it i have been using the electric chisel because i'm getting tired and i was just going in there breaking up this rock and i went straight through that agate oops it's raining again maybe i should go so i told myself one more big one and i'd go that was like half an hour ago i couldn't have been able to find anything basically in half an hour there we go that'll be the last egg from this site though i still have at least one more that i want to check out today if not two so i better get this out of here and then see if we can get on the road to the next site there we go one last nice egg for the day at this site let's beat the rain out of here and go to hopefully a dryer site well there's the pit i dug today mostly worked in this area right here a little bit over there it was fun it was good it was happy i'm all good with it it's time to head to the next site before i get too tired and fall down the hill really before the rain comes and blocks me in here here comes the rain and it's really coming down over there let's get out of here quick well i got back to the safety of the main road doesn't matter how much it rains or snows now i can get out of here no problem it was actually snowing a little bit as i drove out the road okay let's see what we got well we got this one behemoth of an egg it's probably like two to three pounds that thing he's a massive one then i got about you know 15 to 20 of these you know one half to one pound agates and some of them like really glow nicely really nice glowing so these are all real nice agates and then you know i got another 10 pounds of you know smaller egg it's the small small ones like the little guys look at that banded one they go into my golden gem and my gem only pay dirt bags the bigger ones will go into my and and those bigger ones will go into my egg grab bags some of them that intrigue me look at that one that was a crazy thing some of them oh it's banded inside as i get distracted uh some of these things i will actually take to the shop and i'll cut to see what's inside them and uh if there's really neat designs inside them then i make jewelry out of them not a bad haul for a few hours well what was that oh it's not two o'clock so i started at eight it's two okay six hours digging up the claim but i have another site i wanna go and try to get into i've never been to this other site before it's gonna be an adventure i don't know what i'm gonna find but the video is not done here now i never was actually in jeopardy of being stranded in there way out an hour from the near civilization because i do bring the quad with me into these dubious spots and if i have to i can abandon the truck unload the quad and get out to a main road somewhere for safety's sake on the quad rather not do that because that creates a whole lot of work having to get my truck out at a later date and you know asking someone for a ride and all that kind of stuff but you know i do have enough food and clothing and blankets in the truck that if i have to stay a night i can or i've got the quad where i can get myself out to safety if i need so even if it snowed and i couldn't get up that treacherous side road i'd be safe well darn it looks like i'm not going to get into this site this early this spring either that's the second of three spots that it doesn't look like i can make it in this early it's not far off i'm only about two kilometers away from the destination but there's no way i'm attempting that hill on that ice in my poor little truck the mud is slippery enough i don't need to slip off the road on the ice there's a gross in the trees giving quite a display right now anyhow one more spot to go try wish me luck so on the way to the next claim i stopped by a claim owned by a club member of ours and harvested this beauty of an agate though i don't like taking too much material from someone else's claim even if i have permission to be there i don't mind harvesting lots for my own claims but from a friend's claim i'll take one nice one and leave it at that so it is possible i am trying to push this early spring weather a bit too far cause again the road i want to go down is covered in snow and this is the bottom it goes way up a hill from here so there's no chance i'm getting in there it's possible i've been driving through some mud today so of the four or five sites i wanted to get into this trip i got into one i'll leave it a few weeks and i'll get into the rest to get some really nice agates but as for the about 10 pounds of agates i did get let's take a couple of those back to the shop cut them and let you see what they look like most of the agates i'm going to leave full for my agate grab bag so people who buy them get to discover what's inside them for themselves though i do put some cut agates in each bag as well their buttes that's for sure well i hope you all enjoyed this video of me agat hunting or at least attempting to egg it hunt if you enjoyed this video there's a good chance i have other things on my channel that you will enjoy it's mostly about gold mining but there is rocks and gemstones and treasure hunting in there as well so check out the rest of my channel there's lots there big thanks everyone for watching and an extra big thanks to my patrons out there because of your support i get to make these weekly episodes of dan heard prospecting if you'd like to learn how to support my channel head off to patreon.com dan heard and if you'd like to buy any of these agates or other gemstones or fancy stones or gold or pay dirt or anything i sell check out my website at www.danherdprospecting.com hope you all have an amazing day and until the next one bye you

Channel: Dan Hurd

Views: 27,475

Rating: 4.9739189 out of 5

Keywords: rock hunting, rock hound, rock collecting, agate hunting, agate, agate collecting, gemstone, gem, gems, gem hunting, gem collecting, bc, british columbia, canada, agate cutting, agate polishing, rock polishing, rock cutting, claim, rock quarry, dig site, rock club, lapidary, video

Id: CPJOuv3agfU

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021