Found Beautiful Star Sapphires on my New Sapphire Site!

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] prospecting here welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome I hope to earned your subscription today today we are digging for sapphires those Star Sapphires the new claim I got over the winter we're back here to see if we can find some more Star Sapphires and I've got the whole crew today so wish us luck and I hope you enjoy [Music] now we were here yesterday and found about five different spots that we want to work today and extract some samples from spots that had both sapphires visible on the surface and some really nice Garnet specimens our first one is right here behind these ferns right over there we see a pegmatite that is showing some possible sapphires coming out of it I'm gonna see if I can get a little sample from there and then as I worked along the wall here I did see some other pegmatites that you know showed possibility in fact here is the pegmatite that I'm interested in right now seeing if I can get some chunks out of it this is a metamorphic rock and if you do watch my videos I made a mistake early on in one of my other videos saying that there was a pegmatite in a metamorphic rock and then I went looked it up and pegmatites only form in igneous rocks yet this is metamorphic and there's a pigmentite so I'm a little confused on the matter when I look at the geological you know reports of of the area they say these are pegmatites for sure and these are official geologists reports saying these are pegmatites but as far as I know pegmatites form an igneous rock and this is definitely a metamorphic rock so someone in my comments please clarify what I've read wrong who's wrong what's wrong I was wrong but anyhow here's the pegmatite here are some sapphires well let's get them out I will be used by a Milwaukee a rotary hammer or hammer drill here today to put a couple of holes around this that I can throw feather and wedges in and see if I can pop out a chunk of this pigmentite some really big tourmaline over there but I see what possibly better sapphires over in this spot foreign new feathered wedges today to try to extract this chunk of rock if you haven't seen me using Feathering wedges before I have lots of videos on how they work basically you drill a hole you slide them in you hammer on the end it expands in the hole and hopefully breaks the rock out this one was at a good enough angle it should pop it out this one wasn't quite much of an angle so I'm a little bit worried this one's gonna be tight I did decide to throw one more in just to be you know not safe but you know to increase my chances of getting a good chunk out of here okay first chunk of pigmentite coming off let's have a close look at it just off the surface so I don't see any sapphires in there unless that's one tough to say that might be a garnet up there on the outside I did see something that could have been one but this is just to chip off the surface there we go that's a bigger piece of pegmatite and look at that [Applause] Sapphire and lots of sapphire beautiful there's a sapphire there's one there's one there's a big one unfortunately we broke them because they're still inside but uh there's a specimen and a half right there nice now we've come really early in the morning because it's uh going to be a hot day and we want to be in the cool so the light right now is very terrible but you can see in this piece I just broke out big Sapphire there that's like a half inch across another one below it another one right there we've got one up here one there one here now these are star sapphires it's a corundum it's a gray or silver corundum which is the technical term for Sapphire and these were all broken as it broke out of the rock but there's gonna be at least half the sapphire left inside there that could be made into a gemstone but what I want these for is specimens what's your initial thoughts Dina it looks pretty it kind of looks purple like a purpley black silver a purpley black silver yeah well it really glistens doesn't it really has a shine where it's broken on its uh fracture planes it's cleavage planes within the sapphire itself very cool is there more in that there's more in the wall but it's gonna be hard to get it out because it's getting deep into the wall but we will get some more of that out of there now I have had a lot of comments lately about people who like watching my gold content saying Dan you're doing too many you know gemstones and rocks do more gold well the truth is there is far more money in gemstones and Lapidary Rock than there is in gold in a good day of gold panning I might get a gram of gold you know 75 Canadian in gold today I'm harvesting Sapphire specimens that I'll sell on my website for 10 times that value what I can get in a day here is like 10 times what I could get in gold now I know it's not all about the money it's about the adventures about getting out here it's about spending time with my family but I absolutely love the treasure hunt looking for gold remember my channel is about you know treasure hunting searching for minerals gold just happens to be one of the first ones I did but I love the gemstones I love it I still do the gold content there's at least two gold videos every month but there's you usually about two you know rock and gem videos as well I try to keep it about 50 50 to keep everyone out there happy some people love gold some people love gemstones some people just love watching my Adventures so for those of you that want to see more gold it will be coming but right now I'm having a blast finding these gems okay that can go in the bag our first great specimen of the day many more to come and Dana is working up the claim a bit going after garnets you wanna forget it a little bit just tagging where we want you to come and check out yes just checking out where I need to go and extract next but first there's more of sapphires to be had so I just popped out the feather wedges but I'm gonna drill those same holes a little bit deeper and see if I can get the next little section of this out I see a cracker coming see what we get out with this one here's our next specimen okay there's Sapphire all through there so I think I'm gonna break off this and then that separately oh as I hit the sapphire itself there we go Beauty specimen awkward angle and it's loose chisel do we have a chisel anyone gentle gentle gentle here we go [Applause] tough to see if that oh yeah that might have something in it we'll keep that aside tourmaline crystal here's the piece I want oh yeah more sapphires right through this one big ones on the front smaller ones in the back another perfect specimen I will definitely get shots of these sapphires out in full sunlight also so that you can actually see what they look like with better color this early early morning light is making everything look blue which I guess is okay for sapphires another one for the bag Dane we'll be gentle with these though so they don't hit against each other ah too much okay what have we got we got more sapphires in behind we got a piece of the pegmatite here that's just ready to come out I can just do that with a chisel and then moving along let's see what else we get so looking at the pigmentite here we got this big trunk that was right there off I think that's the end of a weathered out Sapphire right there I think that might be the end of a weathered out one right there so I'm putting a feather wedge I'm just try one it's kind of dangerous going with only one it might get stuck I'm gonna try one right there see if I can pop this little section up and then just move along on the surface here that's the idea let's see how it goes okay I'm coming like you thought Dane yeah it looks really crumbly okay yes the sapphire right there tourmaline crystals that might be a sapphire it might be tourmaline light's terrible but great little specimen and then right there those are big tourmaline like a big tourmaline crystal right there we're on the right stuff that's for sure yep so I may have lost my first Feathering wedge for the day this one went in and went in and went in it just stayed Tighter and Tighter and Tighter never did actually crack or pop and I can't Hammer anymore so I put one above see if we can break this off and hopefully it frees that one up oh now I've done it oh maybe third it's a little sapphire in a little specimen again small Sapphire I have a crack right through it let's see what happens when I open up the crack nope there we go there it is two little specimens each with a sapphire these are very very sellable on the website people will love buying a small piece that shows what a sapphire looks in like in host there's two really nice ones I have a lot of Feathering wedges that are not happy this won't come out and here is a sapphire almost on its own there is a nice you know 5 8 Sapphire the termination will be in The Rock still that's awesome awesome where's my close-up camera and you just pulled that off the wall there yeah it just came out of right here didn't even know it was there just pulling the debris away and one of them was a sapphire and the piece right beside it had the other half I'm loving it soon we're gonna have to go for some garnets though it's cracking right on the crystal so I'm not sure if we're gonna get anything from this one it was just an old remnant of a sapphire and then a new one tourmaline Sapphire beautiful little specimen that would make a Star Sapphire now here's a sapphire that came out whole and is in really good shape something like this is what we would actually you know make a little tiny cab out of to show the star of a Star Sapphire and more of them those there are star sapphires if you think of sapphire as always being blue sapphire actually comes in a whole rainbow of colors and black and silver are common blue is common you can get red red sapphires are called rubies this is not uncommon to have these silver sapphires we've decided to go on to the next area for the garnets because there's some amazing Garden specimens over there but just as we were packing up and pulling out our Feathering wedges and stuff we saw this this could be the top side of a really big Sapphire so we've round this feather wedge in really hard which is fractured up the bottom we push this one in all the way it loosened off a big rock here but I think we can actually get a specimen out that has that big sapphire in it now let's hope it's coming trees are coming I'd rather not break this one if I could get away with it without breaking it that would be awesome it's way up here I'm just trying to get the rocks out from underneath Sapphire this one a little specimen beautifully Sapphire out the back side I believe that's a big oh absolutely there's there it is it goes through it's huge and it's oh I gotta get close up to show you what's in behind and in behind what I just pulled off is even bigger that is a nice looking Sapphire right there still as possible Right There here it comes big Sapphire it fell well that ended up being a beauty at the end of the pocket oh there's lots more in this pocket I have come back to another time right now we want some garnets but what a beautiful specimen we were able to get all our feather and wedges out this pegmatite is not done there's lots left in it but we got coordinates to find foreign [Music] a lady from the society that runs the trail Network here this uh rail trail just was walking by you know having a pleasant day stop by say hi and she asked us a favor she said when you're breaking up rocks he makes sure they don't go in the ditch because in the ditch they plug up the water make a mess so of course absolutely we'll do our best in fact we notice where some other people had left rocks in the ditch Dana's clearing that out right now gotta do our civic duty keep the recreational trail people happy and keep the trail in good condition we were working right there we're now going down this way so the geology of this area is amazing it's a great big huge metamorphic blob it's called the Valhalla Dome actually that covers the whole Countryside here that's pretty these crazy Twisted metamorphic rocks and it's also made the perfect environment for gemstones to form you've seen the sapphire so far the star sapphires we're about to go for the garnets there's also aquamarine here there's tourmaline all over the place there's some Zircon lots and lots of gemstones here now if you remember I'm a prospector I'm not a miner I don't plan to make a you know a gym mine out of this spot back in the 90s they tried to make a gem mine here and you know it fell through it didn't work they didn't get the investors whatever so someday it's possible this area will be turned into a mine site that gets sapphires aquarine tourmaline zircons oh iolite don't forget the iolite purple stone beautiful purple stone all through here but we know where the garnets are so let's go find some of them this Bluff here has garnets all through it some nice big ones a lot of little guys they're all fractured up along here we'll have to get a good shot of one somewhere they're all fractured up but sometimes in the core of the bigger ones has a nice solid bit that can actually be faceted into an amazing gemstone yeah let's go find a good one to show you this looks like a plate of Tourmaline crystals in this little fracture here very cool I wonder if that was all washed up and maybe dipped in acid or something if that would turn out really nice I don't know if I can get that rock out though so here we are with some smaller ones in this little section here we got Garnet Garnet Garnet a lot of little garnets up here that's actually one really big Garnet right there very very fractured up it's it's not you know anything possible of gem quality but I think what we're going to do is we're just gonna break a piece off here right now to have a look at what a fresh break looks like and see if there's specimens in that before we move on to the other spot garnet massive garnet hmm a little specimen might eat the Chisel now that one didn't come clean and pulled off a great little specimen here full of garnet full of garnets all over the place even the host rock is full of garnets not just the pigmentite the host itself around this place ton of garnets and again a great little specimen for someone who wants you know to see or have a specimen in their collection of garnets in pigmentite or garnets in a metamorphic schist there we go yes schist Evan's favorite word schist yes [Music] he is the shist anyhow I'll see if I can get a few more of those specimens for the website very red garnets too that's the nice thing about the garnet to this site when they do get that core that's facetable is there such a beautiful bright red but we're not looking for fast grade we're looking for specimens today if we get faster great that would be awesome and here's a rock just loaded in garnets loaded this will be make some nice specimens all around everywhere so drilled one hole on top we're gonna see if we can split this Stone just down one of its you know bands one of its flaws one of its seams and then we'll break it down into specimens from there hopefully it breaks along something that has lots of visible garnets exposed let's see what we get cool it is definitely a schist full of garnet that is a amazing specimen yeah baby now there's a specimen it has one of my drill holes right in the middle of it someone will want that because they saw me drill that hole there we go we finally got the cracks forming where I kind of wanted them to form so we're gonna be able to break this apart and I think we're gonna get some real nice specimens out of it now what an amazing specimen that one will be unfortunately our bags are getting way too full and Dana has to carry them all out by herself that's where we have boys oh okay oh great specimens but I think we're gonna have to call it quits for specimen Garnet specimens at that because we're out of space so three specimen bags full and a couple that didn't fit the bags plus all our tools that's a lot of weight to carry out that's why we brought Evan Evan is the muscles of the no never mind Alex is the muscles of the day Alex can do it oh no we're all gonna be loaded down carrying this stuff out but we're not done yet there's more to come we still have some great tourmaline to investigate we have a few some more Sapphires and I want to get down to the creek here and do some Gem sieving of the gravels of the creek to see if it reveals anything intriguing because it's more than just Sapphires and garnets at this site and we might be able to find evidence of other things [Music] well we took a brief break for lunch here and uh came back out and it is cooking out here the sun is just baking us there is no relief from the Sun there's no shade anywhere we are not gonna be able to last long especially a family of redheads in this sun so Dana and Alex are going to run down and dig some gravel so we can do some Gem sieving and see what we find in the river gravels Evan is right here we are going to find that tourmaline crystal and maybe a few more Sapphires and we're gonna do what we can really quickly before we die to heat exhaustion good luck guys thanks jump in the water if you need to yeah don't melt ah okay yeah what we're gonna do is we're gonna throw a phantom wedge here maybe one right there we're gonna see if we can get this tourmaline uh fan off in one piece there are sapphires below it but where we want this tourmaline right now of course we want sapphires too you think you can do that I got it excellent and no that's not the right mask for dust but you know hey it's what we had in the in the camper van and we don't want Evan breathing that does so we put it on him uh yeah that's pretty good maybe a little bit more of an angle that way and just go out go for it okay you have time to put the feather wedges in bring the feathers forward put them in the hole so they expand the direction you want and let's see what we can do push the feathers forward so they're sticking way out front of the wedge like that there you go now put in like that that's a good angle yep push it in all the way good this one here we want to expand sideways good push it all the way in excellent and we have one more not that hole this hole right here and we want to pull it off the rock face with that one well done now that's the end of the Dust so you can take off your mask if you want okay just a couple little Taps on each one just to set them I get the angle right so you can swing on that okay let's hit that one there a few more times put a bit of pressure away from the wall yeah TJ swing a hammer aren't we it's horrible okay now now let's go this one more one more one more okay the top one okay wait wait we got our first little pop going so let's get over here and get that one going harder harder man harder you got her well done I might do the rest of the swinging you catch it when it falls I was just hammering this one here and I heard a big pop and I see a crack right there for me all the way up over and I assume it's yeah it's separating from the wall this whole thing's gonna go I'm gonna get Evan to hold it as I bring it down whole thing's coming see yourself in that piece nope put some tourmaline she's free you got it you got it I got it oh look at that oh that's a sapphire what a piece we have at least you know 40 sapphires I see including a beast of one over there a beast of a sapphire nice now EV you take this flip it over see if we got the tourmaline on the other side there's a right there tourmaline it is Gonna Come Apart in two pieces okay so carefully put that down and we got a gray specimen oh my goodness that's hot let's go hide the shade for a sec oh we can't work in this heat is just killing us it's probably like 40 degrees out here that'd be like uh a hundred Fahrenheit we got off that great sample we got off two or three more good pieces we got off that tourmaline fan star or whatever Alex came back and said they got a bucket full of gravel for me to do some gym sifting I'm only gonna do one sifter for full I want to see what's there I'll wait for the water to go down before I come and do a full video on gem sieving here but I figured since I'm here I have to get at least one no matter how hot it is so apparently they're down there somewhere and they were able to get a bucket full of gravel oh I hear Dana oh walk down this treacherous path without tripping and falling to the slocan river there we go there's Jim Zev there's a bucket let's do this oh I found the jumpsuit I found the bucket I found my wife did I get the right stuff sure it looks grovelish as I said I said go on camera one is just because we're here we're doing one we'll come back at a cooler time when the water is down lower and we can actually do a real investigation of the gravels and see if there's Garnet sapphires iolite tourmaline aquarine although aquamarine's not heavy so it wouldn't go to the bottom but anyhow I'll be good for the first load so sifting it out first down to a quarter inch quarter inch Sapphire nice yeah quarter inch classifier if there are any big garnets we're sapphires we'll have to get them the next time this is not a full gym tip so we're going to dump this out and put the rest on top excellent whatever's there will be enough we'll make that enough [Applause] you want to know what I'm doing here I've watched the videos on Gem civs and how they work go back and check out do a search for Gem Civic on my channel and you'll see what I'm doing but basically I'm just concentrating the Heavies like the gemstones in the middle and then we'll be able to flip it upside down and see what we've got okay here's a nice Flat Rock to do a flip-on here we go one two three oh perfect oh my goodness those garnets everywhere that's some garnets for you I don't know if I'd be able to identify the sapphires if they were here but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take all the Heavies from the middle take them all home and we're gonna see what they look like under the microscope see if there's any sapphires in there or iolite or zircon well I like it a nice circular red for the garnets black for the Heavies around it if there were any sapphires they would be in that mix somewhere won't be able to tell till I take it home put it in a microscope though so we're gonna grab those centers put in the bucket and we are getting out of this heat but when we get back to Camp we're going to show you some nice close-up shots of all the stuff we found today nice Center there we've got this is all red then we've got black around it really nice looking garnets foreign foreign [Applause] this is way too hot I have to cool off so I'm back here at home made my air-conditioned living room with my microscope on these uh gem Civ cons uh I didn't concentrate these as much as I would have liked to on the river I was just it was a matter of what was going to happen first that I was going to melt or spontaneously combust out there so I just grabbed what I could and ran and found some cool but uh put the microscope on it and before I even moved around to look at everything instantly the microscope was on a sapphire that grayish purple thing in the middle there definitely a sapphire you can see the banding that you get the typical layers of a sapphire and the shape of it there's the first Sapphire I see sort of I would have focus in the background a bit of a garnet the black things around are tourmalines but let's start looking around and see what else we see I would have liked to have concentrated these a little bit more so we actually have you know a lot of garnet and whatnot in there not seeing anything right now lovely that's possible another Sapphire right there again let's move around a bit more and here's some of those very very Jimmy garnets for sure now if my voices sound a little bit funny the microphone on my microscope is a very very terrible so you know my voice comes and goes and it's not great sorry about the audio but we're here to look at things not listen to me but there's some great garnets I'll look around and see what else I can find now I was hoping to see this right there in the middle of the screen that purple gemstone is a piece of iolite I wanted to see some eye light we never saw any of the pegmatites I was really hoping in the gem sieving I'd find some iolite and there it is it's a tiny little speck tiny little speck but you can really see the purple there let's see if I get the light on a bit better that purple gemstone is absolutely a piece of that iolite nice and this looks like another little piece of highlight in there it might be Garnet I'm not an expert on this and I can't quite tell the difference apart but that looks purple not red so maybe another piece of my light and when I start looking around I start seeing sapphires everywhere there's one right there they're just tiny tiny tiny tiny sapphires but sapphires everywhere garnets everywhere maybe even a little bit of iolite I could look at these things all day long look at that Garnet nice and a couple more right here beside it they're more fractured up not quite as Gemmy but and that's a perfect little iolite there's the purple amazing and we'll end it off with one more great little Sapphire shard in the mix you can again see the structure and the banding of the sapphire there it's kind of the plating of it if anything and this one is definitely a bright silver anyhow let's get back to it okay we're back at Camp it's starting to cool off some I think it was hotter than the surface of the Sun today out there we ended up with getting about 16 good-sized samples of you know Garnet Garnet specimens here Garnet in schist Garnet in this metamorphic rock really nice stuff and about you know 20 or so Sapphire specimens this stuff is amazing beautiful things these all have to be taken home and you know cleaned up but let's bring out the close-up camera and take a few shots now that I can actually see the screen on my camera today it was so bright I had to just go by uh faith that my camera was taking good shots so there we go here's one of the smaller Garnet samples love the the metamorphic rock here the lines the bending the just craziness that goes on in this rock I'll probably cut down these Garnet samples because they are fairly large cut them in half maybe make a nice flat base on each of them so they all stand up nicely so they make for great display pieces everyone is so unique everyone looks a little different than the previous but they've all got great character and then there's the sapphire specimens Sapphire and tourmaline crystals look at that Green Tourmaline there didn't even realize we had some green ones but that's definitely Green Green Tourmaline with a nice Sapphire a couple of little things little sapphires as well and this is just on a little a little specimen some of these things are huge and The Sapphires almost always make these hexagon shapes unless you're looking at the side of them like there's the side of one sapphire but looking head on the surface they make these hexagon shapes again just a small little specimen beautiful sapphires this is just a bunch of black tourmaline but still amazing looking specimen and then this guy Sun's breaking through a little bit that is you know well there gives you some scale it's the size of the end of my thumb big Sapphire surrounded by lots and lots of little ones here's one on edge the sapphire right there there's a sapphire on edge so you don't see the hexagon you see the edge of the hexagon you can see it's about maybe a quarter inch thick there's another one on edge the hexagon would be up on that flat face but if you rotate around oh it's got the shade nope anyhow that would be the edge of it and that's a huge specimen there's a crack down right now we'll split it into two for sure and then we may even cut it down from there more big sapphires more big big sapphires this one you can really see the hexagon look on top and then if I turn it around sideways you can see the edge of the hexagon that's a nice Sapphire there I have to find one of these real good ones that I send off to a friend to get a cab made out of so we can show the star because these are all star sapphires and of course as always if you want one of my amazing finds you can check out my website www.danherdprospecting.com in the shop and the auctions [Music] well there we go a scorching hot day we're just sitting around the camp cooling off after our swim checking out our amazing finds I really hope you enjoyed the video if you did please leave me that thumbs up if I haven't earned your subscription already I hope I've earned your subscription now and a big thanks everyone for watching especially my patrons because the sport of my patrons I get to make these weekly episodes of Dan heard prospecting hope you're all having an amazing day and until the next one bye bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Dan Hurd

Views: 1,020,209

Keywords: gold panning, prospecting, panning for gold, mining, gold, rock hunting, rock hound, rock collecting, british columbia, bc, video, canada, finding gold, gemstones, gem stone, gems, treasure hunting, metal detecting, diamond mining, metal detector, gold detector, gold river, metal detecting gold, gemstone hunting, gold panning for beginners, finding gold with a metal detector, metal detecting for gold, sluice box, how to gold pan, gold mining process, sapphire, star sapphire

Id: fYCJ7kP8qcc

Length: 37min 53sec (2273 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022