Garnet

[tims]

Incredibly long story short, today i went looking for rose quartz and ended up sniffing out some garnet.



Not sure what that dark lunker is, but it looks naturally faceted so i kept it for further review. No idea what these might be good for but it was fun sleuthing them out.

[Garage Rocker]

Nice! I'd love to use those as smalls in my tumbler.

[Fossilman]

SCORE!!

[Deleted]

tims where so you live?

[metalsmith]

Brilliant - good haul Tims! Heavy gravels?

[tims]

Sept 19, 2016 9:36:01 GMT -5 Garage Rocker said:

Nice! I'd love to use those as smalls in my tumbler.

What kind of quantity would that take? This was a couple hours picking. I think this spot has a virtually inexhaustible supply but picking them out of the dirt is time consuming.

Sept 19, 2016 13:41:26 GMT -5 @shotgunner said:

tims where so you live?

Newcastle, Wyoming at the SW edge of the black hills. This patch with garnet is closer to Custer SD.

This rough found along a slate outcropping atop a hill got me started. It's dotted with little embedded garnet:

At the base of the hill is a little valley surrounded by similar slate-capped hills. I found a nice bare wash in the middle of the valley and crawled around picking loose garnet until the sun set.

[braders]

Nice find bud and go to see another 307 on here
Ya need to get you some screens , it will speed you way up !! Even dry panning will throw them to the bottom

[tims]

Sept 20, 2016 15:05:01 GMT -5 braders said:

Nice find bud and go to see another 307 on here
Ya need to get you some screens , it will speed you way up !! Even dry panning will throw them to the bottom

Howdy braders, what part of the state are you in?

I'd like to learn how to pan, and this would probably be the perfect material to learn on. Garnet is surprisingly heavy.

[Garage Rocker]

Nice! I'd love to use those as smalls in my tumbler.

What kind of quantity would that take? This was a couple hours picking. I think this spot has a virtually inexhaustible supply but picking them out of the dirt is time consuming

tims, for smalls in the tumbler, it doesn't matter. I usually throw in a handful of small Lakers with each batch I run, instead of ceramic media. They work well for balancing the load for size and you end up with nice little polished Lakers too.

[braders]

I'm down in the sw corner in Rock Springs .
We got a lot of areas to get gem material around here as well .
We use a lot of pans and classifier to speed collection up , unless ya wanna wrestle ants for the littler ones then you can get a bunch pretty quick .
Learning to pan is very easy , and yes garnet is heavy and will stay . Start out putting a few bb's or some shot gun shot in with some dirt and rocks for practice if they are all there at the end you know your doing it right

[tims]

Ah, Rock Springs ... I went to WWCC in 98-99 and those were the 2 best years of my life. Awesome people and a great little college; I think the winters there force people to be warm to compensate That was in my pre-hounding days though and I've always wanted to go back and do some kicking around. The Green River basin and Flaming Gorge area must be awesome, plus the high plateaus probably give you all kinds of variety.

Garage Rocker if I can put some quantity together maybe I could hook you up. Sometimes I feel like a dragon sitting on my horde but I could probably share out a ton or 2 of stuff and have plenty left to perch on.

[metalsmith]

Sept 20, 2016 15:05:01 GMT -5 braders said:

Nice find bud and go to see another 307 on here
Ya need to get you some screens , it will speed you way up !! Even dry panning will throw them to the bottom

Exactly ... any watercourses to concentrate at placer deposits?

and tims - what is the quality of the stones - facettable?

[tims]

Sept 21, 2016 16:07:34 GMT -5 metalsmith said:

Sept 20, 2016 15:05:01 GMT -5 braders said:

Nice find bud and go to see another 307 on here
Ya need to get you some screens , it will speed you way up !! Even dry panning will throw them to the bottom

Exactly ... any watercourses to concentrate at placer deposits?

and tims - what is the quality of the stones - facettable?

There are a few shallow washes but no (visible) streams or deep gulleys ... The vegetation is tall right now though, so there might be an obvious watercourse in early spring. I'll try to check the area a little better next trip but I'm wary of tromping around in waist deep grass and bushes. I don't know if rattlesnakes inhabit the hilly elevations, I've never seen one up in the hills, but I do know there are hidden caves and holes all around that area. I might have a better answer next spring

As far as quality goes, I have no idea what it would take to be facetable. Last summer I took a little medicine bottle full of my grandparents' garnet to a rock shop in Custer in hopes of getting some info. The proprietor told me they were worthless but that she'd gladly take them off my hands. I told her i'd keep them, TYVM, then she proceeded to spill the entire bottle behind her counter. She disappeared behind the counter to sweep them up, and I ended up leaving with about half a little medicine bottle full So now i'm afraid to even show them around and try to get info. Any idea how I might find out more about them?

[braders]

I save any that are at least the size of a eraser on a pencil the rest I don't bother with .... Guess if ya could get a mess load you could sell them for abrasives ?
Not sure on much info in your area but if you are wanting a bunch of them in multi colors hit up the south pass area , they are so thick there that they get annoying while panning , but you you can get a lot of fair sizes .
other local areas here thick in pyrop , peridote, chromium diopside and so on .

[accidentalrockhound]

Hello nice little finds always fun can not be worse then picking Apache tears on ruby moutain Co. The ROCK Shop YOU ToOK The little bottle to, was it called Ken's minerals and trading post? I had a similar experience there, nice little shop though, I'm from Colorado and try to make it to custer state park every other year, for rockhounding and fun,

[metalsmith]

Sept 21, 2016 20:00:19 GMT -5 tims said:

As far as quality goes, I have no idea what it would take to be facetable. Last summer I took a little medicine bottle full of my grandparents' garnet to a rock shop in Custer in hopes of getting some info. The proprietor told me they were worthless but that she'd gladly take them off my hands. I told her i'd keep them, TYVM, then she proceeded to spill the entire bottle behind her counter. She disappeared behind the counter to sweep them up, and I ended up leaving with about half a little medicine bottle full So now i'm afraid to even show them around and try to get info. Any idea how I might find out more about them?

That's very poor form. Not to wish ill on anyone, but I seriously believe in karma

There's a couple of things that you could do ...

1) if they're big enough, cab them - once they're polished up you should be able to see anything inside
2)(depends if they're sufficiently translucent) polish up opposite sides and look through the stone. It won't be all encompassing, but should give an indication
3) tumble a sample again to a fine polish - especially useful if they're small or the batch is variable
4) for relatively translucent stones, place in a small jar immerse in glycerin - just a covering will provide better optics

At this stage, colour would be a good indicator of clarity; since black stones wouldn't really be facettable.

I know that there's garnet and then there's garnet, but what you have must be pretty reasonable in order for folk who should know better to pull a stunt like you describe.

[Deleted]

You need to name the store. Loud and clear. We are family here and that store needs avoiding.

Dumb Bitch.

[metalsmith]

Sept 22, 2016 12:30:24 GMT -5 @shotgunner said:

You need to name the store. Loud and clear. We are full here and that store needs avoiding.

Dumb Bitch.

The Karmechanic arrives...

[tims]

Next time I'm in Custer I'll get the name of the place. I can't say 100% it was an intentional stunt, but it took the wind out of my sails nonetheless.

The batch I found earlier this week wouldn't be cab-able (by me at least); they are small, with the largest at maybe 3/16" diameter. I got fixated on one spot that day and was pinching out garnet the size of salt grains. I also don't have a tumbler yet ... it's on my wish list but it's been a slow, expensive summer. Business is picking up now so after quarterly sales tax next month I hope to nab a double-tumbler plus some other necessities. Anyway, I went back today and worked my way downhill and found some larger ones:

Shabby photo but the size of the biggest today is 1/2" tip-to-tip, with several more 1/4 - 3/8". I'll try for a good pic in the sun tomorrow because this isn't showing the color at all. Sadly it seems like the larger they get, the less clearly faceted, colorful and smooth they are. I'm going to have to go back again because I lost sunlight again today before reaching the bottom of the valley. I found a very obvious creek running out of the basin but couldn't see gravel in it anywhere, just a wide shallow mud bottom. I think early spring with runoff and no grass etc. might make a big difference.

I also grabbed a couple buckets of dirt from the exposed wash, but the wash is also mostly powdery dirt with sprinkles of medium sized gravel and then fist sized shovel benders, with tiny patches of sandy gravel the size of your hand where the garnets really jump out. I'll try sifting the dirt through a screen then maybe practice panning with the rest.

[tims]

Sept 22, 2016 7:40:48 GMT -5 accidentalrockhound said:

Hello nice little finds always fun can not be worse then picking Apache tears on ruby moutain Co. The ROCK Shop YOU ToOK The little bottle to, was it called Ken's minerals and trading post? I had a similar experience there, nice little shop though, I'm from Colorado and try to make it to custer state park every other year, for rockhounding and fun,

No, it wasn't Ken's.

Do they let you collect rock in the state park? I've heard horror stories about gung-ho park rangers but haven't had to tangle with them personally. I stick to BLM and Forest Service exclusively just to be safe.