Fall Cleaning

Au Natural

Like the calendar year, our year with the mining business has four seasons –winter is for selling, primarily at Tucson, spring is spent preparing for mining, summer is spent at the mine, and fall is spent cleaning and preparing the summer’s harvest. With the arrival of our shipment from England in late September, fall officially began, though not quite coincident with how the calendar sees it. As operating a mine for mineral specimens does not bring in enough money to pay all the bills, everyone involved is also busy with their “day jobs” during this time, so the process of cleaning the summer’s take is not as quick as it could be. Never the less, the last of the specimens are usually done by the end of November. After this, everyone gets together for a pricing party, and then the selling season begins.

Each year we send back somewhere around 2500 kilograms worth of fluorite specimens, and sadly, they don’t come with any instruction manual on how to make them look their best. Consequently, figuring out just how to do this is a continuing and constantly evolving process. The fun of digging specimens is, perhaps, the most rewarding part of all this, but if one is to continue digging one must make enough money from the resulting finds to pay for going back and doing it again. And it’s not cheap, believe me. As a result, what we are ultimately trying to do with the cleaning process is to find out what will best make the fluorite convince the potential customers to take some of it home with them.

Now, to anyone who has spent any time trying to sell mineral specimens, it quickly becomes obvious that what the average customer wants is perfection at a bargain price. The problems that someone selling specimens has with this are, first, mining is expensive, and second, perfection is an exceedingly rare thing in nature. As the mine operator, we have little control over the costs, other than to try and economize as much as we can (i.e.: no business class seats on those 10+ hour flights unless you can get a mileage upgrade). The one thing we can influence, however, is the final presentation of the “product” to the public, and this is where cleaning and preparation matter. As I mentioned, perfection is a rare thing in nature. On a good year we may end up with 3-4 flats of specimens we consider near perfect enough to classify them as “retail” rather than “wholesale.”  On a not so good year, we may end up with one or two specimens. I haven’t done an actual calculation but I’m sure that the number of truly great specimens we get is a small fraction of one percent of the total. This means we must spend most of our time convincing people to take the less than perfect stuff if we want to have a chance of raising enough money to go back and digging for more.

When we first started this mining project a number of collectors told us that they wanted their specimens “au natural” – just as they came out of the ground. But guess what? It turned out that no one would actually buy them in that condition. I think a lot of collectors who have never dug specimens themselves have this idea that things come out of the ground somehow looking like they do when they get to the cover of the Mineralogical Record. Unfortunately, at least in our case, what they usually look like is a 5 –10 kg iron-stained rock with a patch of fluorite on one end. In addition, a varying amount of the fluorite has already been damaged or broken by the various forces of nature to which it has been subjected since its formation (estimated at around 260 million years ago).

People who collect minerals claim to want “natural” items, but they also desire aesthetic “perfection.” This concept of aesthetic perfection is a totally human preoccupation and really has nothing to do with the “naturalness” of the specimen. In fact, it is often in conflict with it. Nature is functional, not “perfect” in the human sense, and what we collectors think of as perfect specimens are really just accidents of nature. In trying to take less than perfect specimens and make them desirable to collectors we walk a fine line between satisfying these two conflicting desires. Most specimens, if served up as they come out of the ground, will not find any buyers because they lack aesthetic appeal. If we over-engineer the things during cleaning and preparation, then collectors will think of them as not natural any more, and won’t buy then either. Complicating the issue is the fact that the amount of treatment a specimen may undergo before it is no longer acceptable varies greatly within the collector community. Some people are more concerned with aesthetics and some people are more concerned scientific integrity. In preparing and marketing mineral specimens, one must find some sort of middle ground where these two opposing criteria are least violated for the maximum number of potential customers.

In our case, we’ve found that, as a rule, people will not purchase a 10 kg rock with a patch of fluorite on one end, so many specimens need to be trimmed. In addition, most specimens also have spots of unacceptable damage that must be trimmed away. Using hydraulic rock splitters to do the trimming sometimes works, but often has the result of popping the large gemmy twinned crystals that everyone likes right off the matrix when it breaks. Sometimes the entire specimen just explodes into random bits. For this reason, we often need to use a saw to trim specimens. Many collectors do not like saw cuts on the matrix of their specimens because it seems a violation of its naturalness, so we then need to disguise the saw cuts (at least on the specimens we want to get a good price for) by roughing them with a hand-held pneumatic chisel. This imparts vibration to the specimen that can cause the large twin crystals to jump ship again, so if we think a crystal may come loose in the process, it must be reinforced with some super-glue at its base. This, again, tends to be seen as a violation of the specimen’s naturalness by some collectors. At this point, we reach the conclusion that there is a good bit of truth to the saying that you can please all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can never please all the people all the time.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you really want your fluorite specimens as close to natural as they can be, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to set some aside for you. Just don’t expect a large, undamaged, gemmy, deep green crystal perched aesthetically in the center of a bit of matrix that is just the right size to complement it. If we ever find one like that, we’ll be keeping it for ourselves!

After Cleaning

Waiting for our ship to come in…

Each year, come the end of August, the summer’s frenzy of activity around the mine comes to an abrupt halt when the pallets containing the season’s harvest are picked up by the shipper. Everything just disappears and is pretty much out of our control until the time it shows up, usually six to eight weeks later, at a shipping warehouse in an industrial section of Los Angeles. After the shipment is gone we will spend a day tidying up around the mine and closing down, have one last pint at the Blue Bell, say our good-byes to local friends, and everyone then disburses for his or her journey back home. Then, for the most part, we wait.

Not that there aren’t a multitude of other chores awaiting us back home, like catching up on all the unpaid bills that seem to accumulate while we’re off in the English countryside.  I’ve always fancied myself a geologist, not an accountant, however, and there certain things I would really rather be doing, if you understand what I mean. It’s at this point in our yearly cycle that we shift gears from mining to preparing and selling in order to make the money it will take to go back and dig again the next summer. And for the better part of two months there’s little we can do. Now, mind you, we always send and/or carry back a few pieces in order to give a taste of things to come on the UKMV website and at the Denver show each September. Because of baggage weight restrictions and the high cost of international post for light-weight things such as rocks, this usually amounts to no more than around a dozen or so fairly small pieces. The main event will have to wait until everything slowly makes its way around the globe on a container ship.

When all goes according to plan, our pallets of binned fluorite are put into a container and loaded onboard a container ship, which leaves England about a week after pickup at the mine. From there, the ship crosses the Atlantic, passes through the Panama Canal, and finally make port in Los Angeles about five weeks later. However, the fall is hurricane season in the Atlantic, and if there is bad weather in the Caribbean the ship may port on the East Coast of the US, instead. Our shipment will then be unloaded for transport by rail across the country. If this happens, all bets are off as to when it may arrive in Los Angeles. Evidently the national rail network here is rather antiquated and has nowhere near the capacity it needs to deal with the demands of modern freight traffic. One year our ship made it successfully to the West Coast only to spend two weeks anchored off coast due to a dockworker’s strike.

And then there’s US Customs to deal with. Mineral specimens, classified as “un-cut semiprecious gemstones” are exempt from duty and taxes when brought into this country, so our broker often has the necessary paperwork filed and can get the shipment released within a week of it’s arrival. Customs, perhaps just to show that they’re doing something to protect us from the rest of the universe, can hold shipments, seemingly at random, for inspection. This happened to us a few years back, which meant that our fluorite languished in a warehouse for another couple weeks before someone got around to checking it, presumably, for illegal drugs or undocumented aliens trying to sneak into the country. In addition to having to wait the additional time to get our shipment, we got an additional bill from the government for their services.

Once we do get our shipment releases, the clock begins ticking and we have only a few days to retrieve it from the warehouse before we start incurring storage charges. The first time we shipped back, we made arrangements with a local trucking firm to have it delivered to us at Cal’s place in Fallbrook where we process and store it, only to find out that the cost of having it moved from western Los Angeles to northern San Diego County was close to what we had paid to get it all the way from England. Each year since, we have hired a U-Haul truck and picked it up ourselves. What this means is that, when we get notification that the shipment has been released by customs, Cal has to rent the truck and round up some extra hands to help shift all the stuff while I drive the 400+ miles from San Francisco to Fallbrook. The next morning about 4 AM we hit the freeways, hoping to miss much of the morning traffic, which can get truly awful by 8 on a weekday morning. First stop is the broker’s office to pick up the necessary paperwork, then to the warehouse, where we get in line with all the other truckers waiting to make pickups. Almost all are large commercial trucks that can back into a loading dock to receive their shipments. Being small fry with a U-Haul, we wait in the parking lot. If we’re lucky, the forklift driver in the warehouse isn’t overworked and behind schedule, and is willing to load the pallets into the rental truck for us. If not, we have to break the pallets down and load the truck by hand. Last year we got lucky and were back in Fallbrook by 11 AM, but this is not always the case.

The uncertainty of not knowing just when the shipment will arrive and be available for pickup each year means that yours truly has to hang around and be available to drive south on short notice around the end of September each year. The other day I had the bright idea of doing a Google search on the internet to see if there were any websites that listed the location of commercial ocean-going vessels. Guess what, there are, and it looks like our vessel is currently off the coast of Baja headed towards LA. Isn’t the internet wonderful? Practically anything you want to know is out there somewhere, if you know how to look for it. In theory, the ship should dock tomorrow. If we get off without any complications in customs, I will likely be making that exciting drive down I-5 to Southern California about this time next week.

Stay tuned for more.

Weardale, August 20, 2009

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

Yesterday the weather was typical for the North Pennines – breezy, sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, sometimes a bit of rain. The rain never quite reached down the dale to the mine, but we could see the rain clouds up towards St. John’s Chapel from the mine. This morning looks much the same. It has been unusually warm, however, and the thermostat in my hire car said it was 21C/70F yesterday around 6 pm as we drove back from the mine.

The past few days have been a bit of a frenzy as we get ready to close the mine for the season. On Monday the winch cable we use to haul timber and equipment up to the mine landing from the quarry floor got tangled in a pulley and broke. Though Dave was able to splice the cable together again, it was obvious that the pulley was too small for the job and needed to be replaced. Cal located a rigger in Consett who had something that might work for us and made a quick trip over the moors on Tuesday morning to get it. In the mean time, Dave had drilled several holes in the limestone wall of the landing in order to install new anchor points that would put the pulley in a better position. Today’s photo is of the master in action.

The new pulley was installed by mid-morning, but during the process I noticed that Dave’s splice was already becoming frayed. After a brief inspection and some head shaking Dave said “The cable’s fucked, got to replace it!” This being about the strongest condemnation I’ve ever heard from him, I knew we had no choice but to do so. As Dave was under a time constraint to get the face cleaned up and shot again before closing we sent him back to that chore and Cal, Byron and I had at the winch. Fortunately, someone remembered seeing a spare length of cable amongst the pile of stuff in our storage container. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a larger diameter than what was currently on the winch. This meant that it was much stiffer and will be more difficult to use for our purposes, but after much grunting and swearing, Byron finally got the nuts holding the old cable in place loosened, and the new one installed. After winding the new cable onto the winch drum I realized that some of the bits used to make the loop on the end of the old cable were too small for the new one, so Cal and I were off on a hunt around the dale for something that would work. After three stops we finally came up with something that would do the job, and by around 3 pm we were ready to begin the job of pulling up the timber and new air receiver tanks, something we had planned on starting around 10 am.

Yesterday Cal, Eric and I assembled the last of the pallets to be shipped back to California and pickup by our shipper is scheduled for today. Hopefully this will go as planned but often it hasn’t in the past so everyone is a little apprehensive until the lorrie driver actually arrives. There has been more than one occasion in past years when the driver has not shown up at all, and last year he arrived a full week before we had scheduled the pickup. I’m not sure what the actual problem is but despite the fact that we have been using the same shipper for eleven years, confusion seems to reign every time. This year our contact at the company, which is the largest shipper here in North England, claimed he could find no records for our past business and knew nothing about us. This being despite the fact that he was the person who managed our shipment last year!

After finishing the pallets and doing a bit of cleanup around the mine, Cal and I spent a few final hours digging at the cavity in the back of the Rat Tail that I had discovered on Monday. Aside from getting wet and muddy, most of what we got was wholesale-quality specimens, which will be stored over winter for next year. Cal did get one nice little knob-like cluster that will be coming home in the hand luggage, however. Dave’s tasks at the face went as planned and at day’s end the shot was fired.

Today we await pickup of our shipment, and will be posting some boxes of better specimens back home in order to have them for the internet and upcoming Denver show. After that the final cleanup around the mine and our cottage begins. Cal and company are planning on departing tomorrow while Joan and I will linger until Saturday. Once back home we will once again shift gears from mining to cleaning and marketing out summer’s finds in hopes of making enough money to come back again next summer.

See you at the shows,

Jesse, Joan, Cal, Kerith, and Byron

Weardale, August 18, 2009

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

The weekend was rainy, but not particularly cold. The wind was up so things dried out fairly well between passing rain clouds. On Saturday afternoon one could watch the rain squalls heading down the dale from the mine landing. Yesterday, after a bit of rain in the morning, the sun returned for a nice afternoon. This morning it is windy and overcast again. At least it looks dry out.

Saturday was spent at the mine, with Byron at the face and Cal continuing to harvest the Rat Tail Pocket. The zone of alteration at the face now stretches continuously along the west side of the tunnel for at least 10 meters, and contains several discrete layers of gemmy fluorite, which seem to come and go. Unfortunately, despite moving a considerable amount of rock, most of what Byron has been able to recover from the zone is heavily damaged. This is particularly frustrating because many of the specimens are incredibly gemmy and lustrous, and have the most intense daylight fluorescence I have seen from the mine. A few large plates covered with small gemmy crystals have emerged intact, but most of the pieces with larger twins have suffered at the hands of the geological past, and are destined for wholesale flats.

In the morning I made the drive up to Newcastle airport and met Joan, who was fresh of the overnight flight from San Francisco. After stopping for some lunch at a favorite pub along the road back to Weardale I dropped her off at the cottage for a nap and headed to the mine. On arriving I found that Cal had made serious inroads toward harvesting the new pocket at the back of the old West Cross Cut area, and had enlarged the pocket opening considerably. The two of us took turns working the pocket through the afternoon, getting thoroughly wet and muddy in the process. As with working many pockets, the required position is laying on one’s side on a slope of pocket debris, while trying to hammer or pry at rock in a small, enclosed space, usually at the limit of one’s reach. Cal is left-handed and I am right, so we traded off the hammering duty depending on which direction one needed to swing.

By end of day we had good number of tubs filled with some very good quality specimens, ready for cleaning. The fluorite from this pocket is quite similar to the preceding Rat Hole, which we harvested in 2007. Crystals are large, up to around 5 cm on edge, mostly untwined, and arranged in interlocking clusters. The luster and depth of color is, if anything, better than the Rat Hole material. Specimens from the bottom of most other pockets in the mine are often heavily etched and delustered, but not so from the Rat Tail. In addition to many nice clusters and plates, the pocket has also yielded a number of nice mounds and knobs. One of the nicest is a large plate of fluorite on quartz with a large fluorite-covered knob projecting upward from the left side of the plate. This specimen is quite impressive, but so large that we will likely need to cut it up for sale as pieces of this size have historically been very difficult to sell. I think I have convinced Cal that we should at least keep it intact until we can show it at Tucson next February. A photo of the beast is featured above.

Sunday was spent at the mine again, with Byron having at the main face, Cal and I back at the Rat Tail, and Joan and Kerith doing a bit of sorting, wrapping and binning specimens. Eric was given the working end of a scrub brush to remove some of the mud from our recent finds. Production from the Rat Tail dropped off, and we spent much of our time breaking rock around the pocket opening in order to gain access to it’s deeper portions. Byron continued to turn up some pretty but damaged material from the face.  Mid-afternoon we knocked off and headed back up dale to meet up with Jolyon Ralph (Mindat), Brian Jackson (National Museums of Scotland) and Maria Alferova (Fersman Museum, Moscow) who were due in for a quick visit to the mine.

Yesterday was a rather frustrating one at the mine due to equipment troubles. We have recently had deliveries of both timber and our new compressed air tanks, which need to be hauled up to the mine landing before we close down this coming Friday. Shortly after beginning this process, the cable on our pneumatic winch became tangled on a pulley and snapped. Dave was able to cut off the broken end and reposition the pulley closer to the winch in order to make up for the lost length, but it quickly became apparent that because of the narrow diameter of the pulley, the tangling problem would not go away. This morning, in addition to other chores, Cal will be driving to Consett in search of an equipment supplier who may have one that will work for us.

Late in the afternoon, after realizing there was nothing I could do to improve the situation, I got back into the Rat Tail Pocket and found a small side cavity that yielded a few more nice fluorites.

Today Dave and Joe will be mucking and timbering the main face in hopes of getting in one final blast for the season. Cal, Byron and I will be attempting to solve the winch problem and get the stuff pulled up to the mine. Shanade and friend are due in to scrub the mud off our latest produce.

Forward in all directions,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, August 15, 2009

August 15, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

Cloudy and still yesterday, seemingly a perfect day for midges, but surprisingly few seemed to be out and about. A light rain started around 5 pm and continues this morning.

Yesterday at the mine Dave was away, so was strictly a collecting day for Byron, Cal and me. Cal and I set to the back of the Rat Hole and with the help of Eric and Joy’s son Andrew had the results of the previous days blast mucked out by around noon. Then the fun began. The shot had gone off perfectly and had broken both the floor and the ceiling to the front of the cavity we had exposed earlier in the week. Taking turns with the hammers, chisels and prybars, we soon had specimens flowing from the pocket and by end of day had recovered about a dozen significant pieces along with several tubs of smaller bits.

Fluorite specimens from the cavity, which I now call “The Rat Tail” because of it’s location at the back end of the Rat Hole, are typical of what we have gotten from the zone in the past couple years, being clusters of large, mostly untwined crystals overgrowing a layer of quartz on ironstone matrix. Many are coming out with a partial coating of calcite or aragonite, but the crystals appear to be quite lustrous and gemmy. A number of large mounds were recovered as well as several that show some of the white quartz in between the fluorite. Most will take some cleaning back home to look their best, but I think some really nice specimens should come of it. Today’s photo is of the pocket as it looked after mucking was completed.

Byron spent much of the day at the main face, chasing the exposure of fluorite and alteration to somewhat less success than we had in the West Cross Cut. There is currently a band of alteration up to around a meter thick showing on the west side of the tunnel and extending halfway across the face. Within this band are several discrete layers of fluorite, which seem to come and go, occasionally opening into a pocket. Unfortunately, the whole area seems to be rather fractured and broken up, and most specimens are coming out damaged or in bits. This is particularly heartbreaking as some of the fluorite is quite gemmy and lustrous and a number of large gemmy crystals over 3 cm have been found. Sadly, all destined for gem rough because of damage to edges and corners. When I went up to check on Byron late in the afternoon, he had recovered a couple large, intact roof plates that were covered with small gemmy crystals reminiscent of what we got from the Solstice Pocket back in 2001. When trimmed up these will be quite attractive.

Back up dale everyone took quick showers to wash to pocket mud out of our hair and off our faces, and then met up with Lloyd, Sandra, Barry and Helen at the Blue Bell. There was a darts tournament on that evening, so we all retreated up to the Langdon Beck Hotel for supper and a few more pints before the pointed projectiles started flying in earnest.

This morning I will be picking Joan up at the Newcastle airport, and Cal and Byron will, undoubtedly, be returning to the mine for more fun in the mud.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, August 14, 2009

August 14, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

Yesterday was cloudy and cool for the most part, and come evening the breeze totally died out, allowing the midges to swarm in fine fashion. This morning it is overcast and still. I can see the little buggers hovering outside, through the front window. It will be a good day to be underground.

Yesterday Byron spent much of the day digging at the face. Though much rock and mud was shifted about, much of what was found was damaged or crushed to bits. Some real nice gem twins were found but the amount of damage means that they will be gem rough rather than specimens. Hopefully we can find some of these that haven’t been forcibly removed from their matrix. Mid-afternoon he opened a small pocket that yielded a couple decent specimens, which were plates of small, gemmy, lustrous twins highly reminiscent of the 2001 Solstice Pocket material. Today I suspect he will be back at it looking for more.

A few days back Cal ordered a couple compressed air reservoir tanks for the mine, and delivery was promised at the timber mill around 10 am, so he left the cottage a little early to meet the delivery truck. After waiting around for a couple hours with no sign of the delivery he showed up back at the mine in a bad mood. Later in the afternoon Billy, the yard foreman at the mill showed up at the mine with the tanks on his forklift. Turns out that the delivery truck had showed up early, around 7 am and dropped off the tanks. Cal did not notice them because a large truck was subsequently parked directly in front of them, and no one bothered to tell him they were there. Today’s photo is of Byron speculating on how we will get them up the tip and into the mine.

Dave and Joe spent the day mucking out the tunnel in front of the Rat Hole, and timbering the area around the newly discovered cavity. A couple short holes were drilled in both the floor and roof rocks in front of the cavity and shot around 4 pm. After letting the air clear for a bit we went in and had a look at the results. The shot looks like it did what we wanted and broke the rock to the front of the cavity, leaving our timbering pretty much in place (something that doesn’t always happen). Dave is off today preparing for a bike meet in Scotland this weekend, so Cal, Eric and I will be mucking out the mess today. Hopefully the cavity will have survived intact, and worth the effort. We’ll know when we get there.

Back up dale we met up with Lloyd, Sandra, Barry and Helen at the pub for a few beers and some chat, and Kerith put on a salmon feast afterward.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, August 13, 2009

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

Yesterday remained cool and breezy all day, with patches of clouds racing through the dale from the west. Little rain actually came our way and the breeze went a long way to drying out the quarry. This morning dawns cool and clear, with a definite feel of fall.

Yesterday at the mine Dave and Joe spent the day mucking and timbering the main face, and by day’s end it was ready for Byron to begin exploring what the newly exposed alteration zone has to offer us. The patch of ironstone and fluorite has continued to widen with each blast at the face, but we have yet to find out whether the zone will produce decent specimens for us.

Byron spent much of the day constructing a pallet to hold some large blocks of Frosterley Marble (actually a fossilifferous black limestone) that he has collected from about the quarry. In the past he has sent home some of the material to make cabochons and other lapidary items over winter. This year, I think he is trying to gather a lifetime supply of the stuff, and day’s end he has loaded up around a ton if it.

Cal has turned up some nice specimens from the back of the Rat Hole in recent days, and the two of us spent some time hammering on wall rock and trying to gain better access to some fluorite-lined cavities at the back of the zone.  Sometime around mid-afternoon we had removed enough rock and washed out enough mud to realize that the back of the cavity we were working at opens up again and continues for at least another meter. From our working position lying in the rock and mud on the floor of the tunnel we could now see a bright green fluorite-lined cavity with at least two large fluorite knobs attached to a large plate of crystals on the roof of the cavity. All this is currently out of reach, under an overhanging mass of large and fractured blocks of limestone. Today’s photo shows the current situation in graphic detail. The first order of business today will be to have Dave secure the area with some timbering and then drop the dodgy part of the ceiling. Hopefully we will regain access to the cavity by tomorrow, though there will likely be some shifting of heavy rocks to be done in the meantime. If we can recover the roof of the cavity intact, it should make a nice finish to a rather uneven collecting season.

Today we are expecting delivery of a couple compressed air reservoir tanks for use at the mine. After 11 years of tunneling at the mine we are now working a considerable distance from the quarry where we park the compressor. The distance results in a considerable drop in power along the airline and also results in the accumulation of a lot of water in the line. Hopefully installing the reservoir tanks along the line inside the mine will alleviate both problems next year.

Dave has his last bike meet for the season this weekend so will be away on Friday. Joan arrives from San Francisco on Saturday, and Sunday sees the arrival of Jolyon Ralph (Mindat), Maria Alferova (Fersman Museum, Moscow) and Brian Jackson (National Museum of Scotland) for a visit. Good friend Lloyd Llewellyn and wife Sandra are also threatening a visit so I suspect that another gathering of the Old Farts will be happening shortly.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, August 12, 2009

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

The weather has cooled off the past few days and is back to what I would consider more “normal” for the North Pennines, in other words, cloudy, breezy and occasionally rainy. This morning there is a slight chill in the air that says the brief northern summer is on it’s way out.

Tuesday at the mine Dave and Joe spent much of the day mucking and timbering the main face. Byron went in early so as to have a bit of time collecting at the newly exposed fluorite seam at the face. When I got in I found him, along with Jurgen and Robert perched on top of the muck heap digging at the left side of the face. Much of what was recovered was, as on Saturday, damaged, but Byron managed to get s few pieces that show potential for good material from the new zone. Byron, of course, could not be dislodged from his perch until Dave and the Eimco were literally removing the rock underneath him sometime around noon.

Cal, meanwhile, had not been able to resist the siren call of the remaining fluorite in the Rat Hole, and was turning up a few good pieces. Because of the dodgy roof situation, no water is currently being used in the area, so collecting consists of gathering a bunch of muddy rocks out of the pocket floor and taking them outside for a washing. After lunch I joined him there and we took turns hammering at the rock behind a particularly large and lovely plate of crystals on the cavity wall. The ironstone that makes up the cavity wall is particularly dense and hard, requiring one to lie on one’s side in the rock and mud while swinging a hammer at a chisel. Needless to say, one’s arm soon becomes quite tired of this, and Cal and I traded off on the task for a while. Toward the end of the afternoon we were joined by Jurgen and Robert, and through the combined efforts of all, the plate finally came loose. Needless to say, the two were over the moon with having collected such an impressive piece, and the day ended with much posing for photos.

Yesterday morning Cal and Eric assembled another pallet of blue bins for shipment home. We are up to three pallets of fluorite now and should make at least four by close-down next week. I spent the morning assembling a wooden crate for an antique Scottish Arts & Crafts chair that Joan found last summer. This was done out in the quarry and as luck would have it, the lid went onto the crate moments before a rain cloud passed through.

Dave drilled and shot the face once again in the afternoon. Fortunately, he was able to swap out parts between the two Holman drills and get one working unit out of it, sparing him the chore of having to muscle the heavy Sig through 26 drill holes again. A number of the drill holes behaved as if they were being driven into altered ground, which gives us hope that the new fluorite zone will continue to develop. We will know more soon.

Jurgen and Robert left early this morning for their trip home. I am almost sure that their bags were well over any reasonable weight allowance on the airline. Joan arrives on Saturday for a couple weeks away from the job at home, and next week we will be closing up for the season. All goes so quickly.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, August 10, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

Greetings from Weardale,

Our spell of good weather has continued for several days now, remaining sunny and warm, and with an unusual lack of rain. Yesterday was a bit cooler and breezy, and I expect that autumn is not far off here in the North. This morning we are back to a light rain, which will give our visitors a taste of our “normal” weather here in the North Pennines.

Friday at the mine we drilled and shot the main face again, hoping to expose more of the incipient alteration zone that was showing on the west side of the face. I parked Jurgen and Robert in a couple spots around the mine that showed some promise of yielding a specimen or two and let them enjoy themselves while getting covered with mud. Being a nice day outside, Byron set up the chain saw and scoured the mine for large bits to be carved up into smaller, more manageable bits.

With no place promising to collect myself, I volunteered to help Dave at the face during the afternoon’s drilling. This turned out to be a much more frustrating and time-consuming task that usual because of problems with the drill. Dave’s favorite drill has always been the small Holman that we purchased a number of years ago. The chuck on the drill recently broke, and will need to be replaced over winter. Last year we acquired a slightly larger Holman, which Dave hoped to use as a replacement. Unfortunately, shortly after he started the drilling it developed a problem with the air feed to the jackleg, which pushes the drill against the wall during the drilling process. After fighting with it for a bit, he gave up in frustration and brought up one of our Sig drills from the storage container. These drills are quite powerful, but are much larger and heavier than the Holmans and take some serious effort to muscle around. Dave finally got the face drilled and shot by end of day, but was obviously quite tired and in a pretty foul mood from the experience.

On Saturday Cal, Kerith and Eric took a drive over to Kendal to visit with Lindsay and Patricia Greenbank, and the rest of us went in to the mine to check on the results of Friday’s blast and show a couple scheduled visitors around. The blast had gone off quite well and only knocked out a couple of cross-braces from the timbering, leaving a large pile of rubble in the tunnel. After hand-mucking the some rock from the top of the pile we were able to see that the alteration zone on the west side is continuing to develop and some seams of bright green fluorite were showing. While I showed our visitors around Byron and Jurgen had at digging the newly exposed seam, and Robert mucked out the mess he had created the previous day while collecting in the Northwest Crosscut. The fluorite from the new exposure shows promise, as there looks to be a lot of gemmy lustrous twins on a crust of smaller fluorite. Unfortunately, most of what we managed to collect was damaged or crumbled to bits when extracted. I’m hoping this is just a result of being to close to the blast and that things will improve as we dig forward.

After closing down around 1630 we headed up the dale and stopped Barry and Helen’s so that Jurgen and Robert could have a look at Helen’s collection. Robert got rather quiet for a while as he looked through the drawers and display cabinets.

Sunday was a goof-off day for all. Byron had a London-based friend he had met in Tucson stop by for a visit to the mine, Cal, Kerith and Eric had an afternoon barbeque with some of our neighbors here, and I took Jurgen and Robert out to visit some of the old mine sites around the dale. First stop was Killhope to see the mineral and sparbox displays, then up to Allenheads and back down Rookhopeburn with stops at Groverake, Frazer’s Hush and the site of the Boltsburn mine in Rookhope. Over the years since closing, the Groverake site has suffered from periodic vandalisms, the most serious was the theft of one of the two mainframes for scrap a couple years back. What remains is a sad reminder of a once flourishing mining industry, which with the exception of our small operation, has now vanished. Today’s photo is of the remaining head-frame seen through a broken window in the former mine shop. When we got to the village of Rookhope an even sadder discovery was that someone has created a garbage dump in the remains of the Boltsburn site. Afterward, we stopped by the Rookhope Inn for a pint of Black Sheep and toasted the memory of this once glorious mine.

This morning we start on our last full week of the season. Dave and Joe will be mucking the face, and Byron will, undoubtedly, be pacing about, anxious to get back to collecting.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew

Weardale, June 7, 2009

Friday, August 7, 2009

Greetings from Weardale.

Yesterday was yet another near-perfect day, weather-wise, here in Weardale. Rain was forecast for overnight but does not appear to have reached into the upper dale. This morning dawned with heavy overcast, but this appears to be breaking and some blue sky can currently be seen. There is absolutely no breeze, however, meaning that the midges are massing for an assault.

Yesterday at the mine Dave and Joe spent the day cleaning up at the face and installing another timber set. After finishing the timbering, Dave spent the afternoon raising and leveling a section of track at the face. While doing this sort of work, Dave needs the floor of the tunnel relatively free of ponded water so Byron was exiled from collecting in the pocket nearby.

During the morning, Jurgen, Robert and I got into manual labor mode and mucked out the Northwest Cross Cut. The Vein Pocket, which takes of from this tunnel appears pretty much done as far as collecting, so hopefully we can get one more round of drilling and blasting done hear before we shut down for the summer. Hope is that there may be more flats out to the west of the vein, but we won’t know for sure until we get there.

After lunch, we tried to find a place for Jurgen and Robert to do some collecting, and settled on our old playground the Black Sheep Pocket. Though there is some good fluorite showing in the back of the Rat Hole, the roof of the zone still looks rather dangerous so everyone opted to leave it be until we can stabilize it some more. There still remains a good bit of material in the Black Sheep, but the host rock is so hard and silicified that it requires the diamond chain saw to remove anything of any size. Regardless, Jurgen and Robert, hammers and chisels at hand, wanted to have a go at trying to collect some of the remaining fluorite. After some thumping and swearing, I think it became obvious to them just why we had not yet collected the entire pocket. To their credit, however, they persevered and by the end of the day they had recovered a few good specimens along with a thorough coating of mud.

Cal spent the afternoon wrapping and binning specimens, and we are now up to three full pallets of our blue bins. Though we still have a couple weeks here before closing for the season, it is highly doubtful that we will come close to last year’s volume, which was five full pallets. A bit disappointing, but it only goes to show just how remarkable the Jewel Box and Blue Bell pockets were, both in terms of quality and quantity of specimens produced. We can only hope we find more like them.

Today Dave will drill and blast the main face again. The layer of alteration at the face increased in size after the last blast and is now showing some fluorite so we are hopeful that more will soon be at hand. Shanade will be in to wash up the week’s accumulation of specimens so we will have a start on pallet number four. Hopefully the breeze will pick up a bit and blow the midges away.

Until next time,

Jesse & Crew