Gemstone Posts

If you recall, I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I was ready to go gemstone hunting again after a long wait. Despite an iffy weather forecast, brother John and I made it to our favorite spot today! Yep, gemstone hunting – back in the creek again!

We were very fortunate today as the hunting was good! The dirt piles we filled our buckets from was fairly fresh, and were lots of nice stones. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, amethysts, and many more were dug out during our visit.

Readers of The Gemstone Chronicles will recognize many of the stones listed above, since they played such a big part in the series. The only stone I didn’t find today was a carnelian (the stone from the first book).

The second book has an amethyst as a key component. Here are some of the amethysts I found today!

Not a bad haul for four hours of work! Below are the pictures of my two favorite amethysts of the day.

Although it may not show up very well in the picture, the purple tip is very dark and has some great faces!

I love this little stone. The color is only a spot and if you rotate the stone, you can see exactly where the purple begins, Very cool!

To celebrate Book Three: The Emerald, I found a few emeralds today. I don’t think any of them are faceting quality, so I will either try to make cabochons with them, or tumble them in my rock tumblers.

It was not a great day for rubies, but I did find a couple. Rough rubies aren’t faceted like the one in Book Four: The Ruby that we all love, but I like the way the look when I find them.

Finally, my absolute favorite stone of the day is a double-terminated quartz! Aidan used that type of stone often in the books to enhance the powers he drew from the gemstones. I often find pencil quartz, but this is my first double-terminated stone. Simply awesome!!

I did find a lot of other stones today and John found a large sapphire among his many gemstones. We will be going back to the creek again soon, so stay tuned for more! I also am going to be trying my hand at making cabochons, so I will post about that, too.

Of all the stones I showed today, what is your favorite? Leave me a comment and let me know. If you haven’t read The Gemstone Chronicles, why not pick up the first one and give it a try. I would love to know what you think!!

Gemstone Hunting!

Gemstone Hunting and I’m ready to go!

I admit that I love to go gemstone hunting. I don’t go digging in the mountains (although if I had some land and a Bobcat…), and I don’t like to go to the places that only offer buckets. As many of you know, I prefer to go to Gold ‘n Gems Grubbin’ in Cleveland, GA. I can go plant my chair in the water, put my feet in the creek, and look for gems using dirt dug from the operating gold mine there.

Unfortunately, it has been a cold winter here in Georgia. Usually, I can get a few trips sandwiched in between cold snaps, but not this year! I am really getting antsy to get back at it!!

Since I can’t go gemstone hunting, I thought I would post some pictures of some of my favorite stones that I have found on other trips.

Favorite stones:

The picture above is a peridot ring. My brother John found the peridot during one of our gem hunting trips and he gave it to me. I had it cut and mounted and gave it to my lovely wife for her birthday!

On our very first gem hunting trip, I found the emerald rough that was used to fashion the emerald show in the photo. It came in at about 2.5 carats. A beautiful stone!

Readers of The Gemstone Chronicles know that the four gemstones stolen from the Elven Bow were the Carnelian, the Amethyst, the Emerald, and The Ruby. You have already seen an emerald and an amethyst. The photo above shows rough rubies and sapphires, along with hematite. In The Gemstone Chronicles Book Three: The Emerald, the dwarves are digging under Seamus O’Keefe’s inn looking for hematite to help the Drow become invincible in battle.

I haven’t found a carnelian yet, so I need to keep looking so I can complete my own Elven Bow gemstone collection, and I need to find a fairy cross. I guess a trip to Fannin County, GA will be in the works!

Do you go gemstone hunting or rock hounding? What are your favorite stones? Leave me a comment and let me know!!

A few days ago, I got a tweet asking me if the fairy crosses that are an integral part of The Gemstone Chronicles stories were real or a figment of my imagination. The truth is…they are REAL!!

Now, I don’t think there are any elves trapped inside the stones, but the fairy crosses I referenced in Book One: The Carnelian do exist. Let’s take a look at the crosses from the book.

Fairy Crosses – The Science:

If my readers recall, Aidan found a group of staurolite crosses by some mounds while Maggie and Beebop set up  the gemstone hunting equipment. Staurolite is the Georgia state mineral. Staurolite crystals naturally form into cross shapes – though we don’t really know why. There are three different types of the crosses. The most common cross is the prismatic  shaped and is a less-defined cross shape. The second most commonly found shape is a “X” known as the St. Andrew’s Cross. The Maltese Cross is perfectly formed and is therefore the rarest and most highly prized shape. The staurolite crosses are most commonly found in Georgia in Fannin County near the North Carolina and Tennessee borders, but they are also found in other places such as Virginia, New Mexico, Minnesota, Norway, and Switzerland.

The legends about Fairy Crosses:

Now that we know about the scientific aspects of fairy crosses, what do the legends say about them? In The Gemstone Chronicles Book One: The Carnelian, Beebop tells Aidan and Maggie two legends about the origin of the staurolite fairy crosses. The first legend was that the fairies, who lived in the beautiful north Georgia mountains, heard that the son of the Great Creator had been crucified. They wept in sorrow at the news and their tears fell to the ground and formed the crosses.

The second legend is part of one of the most heartbreaking realities in the history of the United States. Until 1828, most settlers stayed away from the north Georgia mountains. In 1828, gold was found in the mountains and soon after, the Georgia Gold Rush began. Suddenly, the mountains became the place to be. President Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee from their ancestral lands and moved the nation to Oklahoma along the “Trail of Tears.” Because of this forced exodus, the legends say the Cherokee wept and their tears formed the fairy crosses found in the mountains today. As noted in the book, the play “Unto These Hills” is performed during the summer months in Cherokee, NC and depicts the tale of the “Trail of Tears.”

Fairy Crosses Types:

Here are the three types of staurolite fairy crosses:

First, the Maltese Staurolite Fairy Cross. isn’t it beautiful?

Secondly, the St. Andrew’s Staurolite Fairy Cross. Note the characteristic “X” shape.

Lastly, the Prismatic Staurolite Fairy Cross. This type has a random shape. One thing to note about any of the crosses is that no two are identical.

Despite the variety, none of the crosses above housed Findecano, the elf Aidan and Maggie freed from his stone prison. Findecano’s prison was a chiastolite, a different type of fairy cross. Chiastolite fairy crosses are not native to north Georgia. Chiastolite is a variety of andalusite and has carbon inclusions that form its characteristic black cross. Chiastolites are found in many locations around the world.  Prime locations are Spain, and California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts in the United States. In the book, Beebop speculated the stone could have reached Georgia by trade among the native Americans, or by Spaniards exploring the New World .

Below is a picture of a Chiastolite Fairy Cross. Can’t you imagine an elf and a troll trapped in it just waiting for someone to smash the stone and free them?

I hope this post answers the questions readers have about Fairy Crosses. If not, please send them to me and I’ll try to find an answer!

I haven’t found one yet in my rock hunting trips, so I try to keep a sharp eye out for them. Besides, legends say wearing fairy crosses bring good luck, so if I happen to find one, I will be sure to keep it with me!

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St. Patrick’s Day Gem Hunting!

St. Patrick’s Day gem hunting! I have a wee bit (okay a lot) of the Irish in me and decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a trip to my favorite gem hunting spot in the north Georgia mountains. This time, though, I tried to do a better job of taking some pictures of what we do when we rock hunt.

Now, I know there are easier ways of doing this. Many people prefer looking through the buckets you can purchase and then wash in the flume. I prefer to do it down at the creek. Maybe it is the restful nature of sitting there with your feet in the stream (although we did wear boots so that our feet didn’t get cold and wet), or maybe it is the idea that the pile isn’t seeded like the buckets, but whatever the reason, I like to sift through the dirt pile down by the water.

Pictures!

This is the dirt pile from which we fill our buckets. We bring our own shovels, buckets, and screens, but you can borrow equipment at the store. Below are buckets of dirt ready to be sifted in our screens!

Here we have a picture of the way we set up to screen the dirt into the creek looking for shiny rocks! See all the screens we have loaded up with dirt and ready to be searched?

What we found!

At the end of the day, we gather up our finds and head home. It was kind of unusual for us in that we didn’t find any really large stones. I found a lot of garnets and quite a few topaz, but we didn’t find any smoky or lemon quartz. One of my favorite stone I found was a smallish moonstone. Although the colors don’t show up very well, it is a brownish red stone and looks really cool!

If you have read The Gemstone Chronicles Book Two: The Amethyst, you will remember that Laura uses her moonstone to cloak her family and friends with invisibility – supposedly one of the magical properties of moonstone. I will have to give it a try and let you know how it works!

As I mentioned above, I found a lot of garnets during the day. The garnets we usually find up there are bigger, but very fractured. Garnets aren’t easy to work with as they are very brittle. They don’t tumble particularly well, even with other garnets, and generally break into smaller pieces. I will have to take some of these out to my gem cutter friend and see if he can do anything with them.

I tried to show the reddish color of the garnet in the picture below, but it is hard to get the light shining through!

As usual, we did find a fair number of amethysts, but none of the large ones (like the 415 carat stone I found a while back), and most of what we found had a lot of other stone mixed in with it. Nonetheless, I have included a close up of one of the amethysts I found so you can get an idea of what it looks like. The purple in this stone is cool, although it isn’t the dark purple like I have found in other stones.

I will be tumbling some of these stones in the not too distant future. I have to wait until my current lot finishes. My next trip will probably be a gold prospecting trip. I recently joined the Weekend Gold Miners. I will try to take some pictures of what I find (assuming that I find anything)!

Have you gone gem hunting (either in a stream or in the buckets)? What did you find?

As many of you know, I love to go gem hunting in the north Georgia mountains. In fact, the entire series of The Gemstones Chronicles was formulated while on a gem hunting trip to Gold ‘n Gems Grubbin’ up in Cleveland, GA.

Today, my brother John and I took advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures and headed back up to Cleveland for a day of gem hunting. We had a great day, as the photos below will attest.

The photo below is of my entire haul for the day. Now, you have to understand, this is not sifting through a seeded bucket of dirt at the flume. Nope, at Gold ‘n Gems Grubbin’ , we dig through a pile of dirt brought up from the gold mine on the site – one 5-gallon bucket at a time. You can buy buckets, if you choose, but we would rather search the pile of dirt. It’s much more fun!

The haul!

The photo (please excuse the quality of the photo) shows the amethysts I found across the top nearest the ruler. Other stones include: aventurine, topaz, quartz (lemon and clear), garnet, obsidian, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. Not bad for four hours of work.

Today’s best finds!

This is my favorite stone of the day! I weighed this very dark purple amethyst at 83 grams (which translates to 415 carats). Given that I just released The Gemstone Chronicles Book Two: The Amethyst, it was really neat to find this stone today!!

This is my second favorite stone of the day. I didn’t weigh this one, but it is a large piece of lemon quartz. Very clear, with few internal fractures. This might be a good candidate for having some stones cut for earrings or a bracelet.

Another very large amethyst that I found today. I didn’t weigh this one either, but you can tell by the size it is a fine specimen. It is not nearly as purple as the first stone, but still a very nice rock!

My last picture is another lighter-colored amethyst. Another very large stone, and one that I really like. I wish I could show you every one of the stones I found today, but this post would be way to long! Enjoy these few and, if you have an opportunity, go look for some of your own!! Many states have gem hunting opportunities, so take advantage of them and see what you can find!! If you do, stop by and tell me about it!

Connect with me:

Do you gem hunt? Have you read any of The Gemstone Chronicles? If so, leave me a comment and let me know. Connect with me on social media, too! I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, so stop by and say hi!

New Toys!!

I know I have been away for a while. I have been working on the paperback version of The Gemstone Chronicles Book Two: The Amethyst, enjoying Christmas with the grands, traveling to see family in South Georgia, and just generally enjoying some time off. In light of all that, look what I got for Christmas!! Yes, I had asked for a metal detector and a two drum rock tumbler and look what showed up Christmas morning!! I can now work three steps of the tumbling process as the same time. How cool is that? And, I can also take my new metal detector with me when I rock hunt. You never know what you might find. Since I live near a lake, I can explore the shoreline and see what I can find. I am excited to get these new toys for me to play with! Here are a couple of pictures I took of the new equipment.

My new Garret 150 Metal Detector!! Not the most powerful detector, but a good start to a new hobby!

And my new two drum rock tumbler!! I can hardly wait until the next opportunity to go rock hunting!! I can tumble six pounds of gemstones at one time in this tumbler, so it’s time to find more rocks! Now if I can just convince Lana to let me buy a Bobcat….

What did you get for Christmas? Anything fun that you can use for your hobbies? Leave me a comment and let me know!

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If you use Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads, find me and let’s connect. You can tell me about your hobbies (maybe I’ll find a new one from your stories) and let me know what you think of my books and my blog!