Day Three - Sapphire Mining 101

A few years ago we passed through western Montana, and on a tip from Marlene (Pat's sister), we stopped in to Phillipsburg to try some sapphire mining.  Well we were hooked when we first saw several blue green little glass balls sitting atop a pile of gravel.  This is our fourth trip and there will surely be more.

For those who may be interested in the process, this is how you mine for sapphires... well without "owning" a true mine. First, you drive south past Phillipsburg turning off toward Skahalko Pass. That is if you want more of a mining experience. You can buy buckets of gravel in town, but it just didn't feel right to us to sit along a sidewalk going through your buckets, while other tourists pass by. So we drive the half hour to the mine site, buy tickets for our buckets of gravel.  You can buy one bucket, however we do the Lucky Seven, seven buckets. The Lucky Seven has two benefits, it has a bit of a price break and you more importantly you have a better chance of finding some of those sparkling stones.

Next, you pick a sorting table and get set up. The mining staff gives each person tweesers, a tube to put your treasures in, a sorting tray (filters out the tiny sand), and a hand brush. Then you pour some of the dirt from your bucket into the sorting tray and take that to the water trough.

Now for the most challenging part. Cleaning and sorting the gravel in the water trough requires  a specific technique: thumbs on top of the frame, rock vigorously side to side, rotate the tray a quarter turn, and rock vigorously again.  This step leaves you with a mound of gravel in the center of the tray. Then you lightly tap the tray with your fingers which settles the gravel and spreads it out. Repeat this process at least three times. On the final tapping step, when the rocks settle out there will be larger rocks around the outside and smaller ones inside. The sapphires are more dense than the other rocks, so they will settle at the bottom of that center pile.

Back at your sorting table the sorting tray is quickly flipped upside down towards you. If you flip it away from you, your freshly sorted rock will fling out across your table onto the ground and other
miners, who will then frown at you. Worse yet, all that rocking, rotaing, and tapping work was wasted as your sapphires are now on the ground being walked on!If the shake, rattle, and flip are done well, sitting on the top of your gravel will be what looks like translucent glass beads or beach glass.

Finally, the tweasers are used to pick up those tiny sapphires. They go right in your handy tube for safekeeping. The typical sapphire most people think of is a dark blue color. We now know that sapphire actually comes in a wide range of colors - white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, green, blue. Montana sapphires are well known for their blue-green color.

Typically, we (meaning Pat) do the rocking, rotating, tapping step twice so we don't inadvertantly miss some stones.  Usually the sapphires we miss the first round are tiny ones that won't get faceted anyway, but it is the idea of

About 114 cts, 40 of which are cuttable.
We should end up with about 20cts of cut stones

wiping them onto the ground with the rest of the gravel you sort which just seems wrong. Most of the time it takes about four sorting trays per bucket of dirt. Since we get seven buckets with four sorting trays each and wash the gravel in the trays twice each, that is  a lot of  shaking and tapping! We figure that working together it takes about 45 minutes for each bucket, so we get at least 4 to 6 hours of fun.



Needless to say, it is a long hot day doing this sapphire mining thing. By the time we are working on the second bucket I usually start to long for something cool to drink. Luckily on this trip I knew that there was some ice cold Razzu beer waiting for us back at camp. Wow, did it hit the spot!

Where to next? We're not sure, but we'll keep you posted.