Processing_Products

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Processing Products from the Mine

Processing the Crystals from Basin Pocket.

This page takes you through the cleaning, identification and sorting process used for all minerals that we bring up to the house. This particular group of minerals all came from the Basin Pocket. Only loose crystals and those found in the dirt (float) are taken from the crystal dome. Our intent is to leave as much of the dome pockets intact as possible.

(Minerals are brought up in egg containers to keep them separated and protected.)

This is the complete collection pulled from the Basin Pocket.

Upon closer examination this group seem promising.

Not so much. Mostly junk.

Also promising.

Minerals are placed in this home made cleaning station, sprayed with a garden hose and left to dry.

The minerals are then taken onto the house for further sorting and soaking in soap and water.

If there are promising crystals that have not cleaned well, they are soaked in a solution of Iron Out (a mild acidic bath).

Sometimes cleaning with a toothbrush is necessary. Why do my teeth always feel gritty?

(Below are the steps in determining the specific gravity of a crystal.)

After 1 to 3 days of soaking, the clean crystals are left to dry.

All you need is a scale that can measure in grams, a small container to hold water and a string or thin wire,

(Once in the house further cleaning and sorting takes place.)

Minerals are sorted by type and quality. This photo has smoky quartz on the left and amazonite on the right.

The crystals fall into one of a number of categories:
- Keepers that are put on display in the house.
- Give away that are boxed and saved as souvenirs for guests that visit the mine.
- Museum samples that are periodically taken to the Pikes Peak Historical Society Museum's give away collection.
- Museum sales that John packages for the Pikes Peak Historical Society Museum gift shop to sell.
- Education groups that are saved and periodically given to:
John for the Denver Gem & Mineral Guild and the Greater Denver Council of Gem & Mineral Clubs
Bob for the Nittany Mineralogical Society, in State College, PA
- Sheila's garden mostly for the amazonite river.
- Berm for decorating the edge of our "cliff" and providing prizes for guests that want to find something on their own (we do not allow prospecting on our property).
- Kitchen steps that is a pile of broken minerals that are still interesting, often large and available for special guests to pick through.
- Neil's basement collection which is made up of minerals that are one step below display quality for our house, but Neil just cannot part with them.
- Junk that is primarily chips of crystals including milky quartz that have no aesthetic or monitory value. These are dumped at the base of trees.

Identifying Minerals:

Identifying minerals is not as easy as you might think. It is not hard to confuse some clear Quartz crystals with Topaz and others such as Phenacite, Beryl and Danburite. Crystal shapes and even colors can be similar. Of course, if you are color blind as I am, all the colors look similar.
The differences can mean huge differences in value and, of course, bragging rights.
One surefire way to tell what is what is to determine the specific gravity of the sample you have. John showed me a way using a kitchen scale, a small container, some water and string or wire. Essentially, what you are doing is determining the density of the mineral you have found. And the different densities point to different minerals.

Tie a thin string or wire around the sample.

You then fill the container with water, but not completely full and weigh that (WW).

Suspend the sample in the water so that is completely covered and not touching the sides or bottom. Now take another weight measurement (WWS).

First you weigh the sample mineral when it is clean and dry (WA).

Plug the values into the following formula:
Dry weight of the sample (WA)
divided by weight of water with mineral suspended and covered in water (WWS) minus the weight of the water (WW).
OR
WA/(WWS-WW)
I use a spreadsheet so I can just enter the numbers and the calculation is done for me.