Hand Made Sterling Silver Jewelry

Tools for the mining of gemstones depends on what you are mining for and where. The following will give you an idea of your needs when sapphire mining:
a variety of screens, a small hand pick, short-handled shovel, a couple of plastic buckets, a small plastic lidded container to store your finds, heavy duty pick, long-handled shovel, a long metal rod such as a screwdriver for getting into the tight areas where there are a lot of rocks.
Hints:
Spend a little time 'specking' over the area for signs of exposed wash, previous successful digs, exposed gems due to recent rains, and any indication of un-worked ground. When working a dig for example gem stones, you are looking for a layer of wash or gravel seam. This indicates an old river bed.
How to screen:
Place your screens one on top of the other and fill your top (5 mm) screen with wash, submerge below water and shake in a circular motion with a slight up and down movement to partly suspend the wash in the water while turning. This assists with releasing the smaller and finer wash. When washing is complete, remove top screen and rake through it with your fingers, looking for gems of a 'glassy' appearance or stones of interesting colours. Hold the screen above you head and into the sun, and if you see anything shine, inspect it as it may be a gem that you have missed. Next inspect the lower screen (3 mm) and wash again to remove any clay matter. When washed, shake vigorously up and down with the left and then right hand coming out of the water with the wash in the centre of the screen remaining submerged. Then turn screen 90 degrees and repeat. This will bring the heavy material to the centre. Repeat about six times and one the last time, bring the line of wash into a round pile at the centre and 'pat' the screen up and down on the water's surface to level out the wash. Take the screen to a clean, flat area for inspection and flip the screen over towards you landing it squarely upside-down. If centred correctly, the gemstones will be in the centre and on top.

Since 1935, the mining of gemstones in the United States has been almost entirely through mineral collectors and hobbyists.
Rather than doing the mining themselves, owners of land that has a deposit of gem-quality minerals sometimes charge hobbyists for the right to collect gemstones. For example, diamond in Arkansas, opal in Idaho, and agate in Oregon and Washington are mined by hobbyists under this "fee digging" arrangement.

The 1990 U.S. output of natural gemstones was primarily from Tennessee, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Nevada, and Maine.
An estimated 80,000 visitors found a total of 315 carats of diamonds in the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. There were sizeable yields of freshwater pearls in Tennessee, turquoise in Arizona and Nevada, tourmaline in Maine, and tourmaline, kunzite, and garnet in California.
U.S. production of commercial gems includes agate, beryl, freshwater pearl, garnet, jade, jasper, mother-of-pearl, opal, peridot, quartz, sapphire, tourmaline, and turquoise.

Since 1892, Sapphires have been mined at Gem Peak area on Rock Creek near Philipsburg, Montana. The first load of sapphires is shipped from Placer mines and eventually as far away as Switzerland for watch jewels and fine instrument bearings. Here was a world-class discovery and supply to meet a growing demand for corundum; sapphires and rubies. That Rock Creek deposit was known early on as being exceedingly abundant, and is notable as the only placer concentration plentiful enough to have been worked commercially for sapphires. Since those early days, and continuing into modern times, Montanans and visitors have enjoyed mining gemstones for fine jewellery. Colours range from the classic "cornflower blue" to "red-orange" and "mint green." The sapphires found and finished here have a character and beauty all their own.

Several kinds of natural gemstones have been found in every State of the United States, but much larger deposits of the most precious kinds are found outside the United States. Most of the World diamond reserves are in southern Africa, Siberia, and Western Australia.

The northern and north-western parts of Pakistan are shrouded by the three world-famous ranges called Hindukush, Himalaya, and Karakorum. In these mountains have been found nearly all the minerals Pakistan currently offers to the world market, including aquamarine, topaz, peridot, ruby, emerald, amethyst, morganite, zoisite, spinel, sphene, and tourmaline.

Zambia has rich reserves of gemstones, including the second largest deposits of emeralds in the world, the largest deposits of amethyst and aquamarine in Africa and modest deposits of tourmaline. The quality of deposits, especially of emeralds, is judged to be among the best in the world.

Tanzania has been a significant diamond producer for several decades, with the bulk of production coming from the Williamson Diamonds Mine at Mwadui where commercial production began in 1925. Tanzania is endowed with various species of coloured gemstones including the beautiful Tanzanite (blue zoisite). Other gemstones mined in the country include ruby, rhodolite, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, chrysoprase, peridot and tormaline. Recently, a major alluvial occurrence was discovered in the southern region of Ruvuma, Mtwara and Lindi. Varieties include chrysoberyl, spinels, sapphire, garnets, zircons and diamonds.
Crystal Quartz is also found in Tanzania. It is found in Morogoro region, Tanga Region,Kilimanjaro Region, Iringa,Singida Region, Mererani etc. On the surface, the quartz found in abundance is milky quartz. You have to mine deeper to get rid of Milky Quartz before you can reach the Clean Crystal Clear Quartz, making it a highly costly laborious work. It does also depend upon the vein belt. If the vein belt shows clarity within few metres of digging, you will reach high grade quality Crystal quartz. The ground is mostly covered with kind of mud type sand. If you happen to get a good vein, it can reach up to 300 kilometres underneath the earth. Quartz is also found lining Geodes, in meteorites and in moon rocks. It is present in nearly every other rock type. Sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rock contains quartz in one form or another and in varying concentrations. It is essential in the formation of most igneous rocks, including Granites, Granodiorites and Rhyolites. The weathering of igneous rocks removes most other minerals, but Quartz grains resist the erosion process. They collect together and when compressed make Sedimentary formations. When Sedimentary rocks containing Quartz enter a Metamorphic process, the size of the Quartz grains change greatly.
Rutilations in Rose Quartz can create a star effect. Rutilated Quartz is a variety of Quartz Crystal containing impurities of Titanium Dioxide, which forms needles within the Quartz. Some have called it Venus’ Hair Stone.
Smoky Quartz has colours that range from tan to light grey which makes it rare in the mineral world .There are only a few others, that display brown or black colouring.