More Smoky Quartz

Late Fall 2010 Jim Nizamoff had heard enough about all the smokies that were coming out of the pocket, that he decided that he needed to come over and see what was happening. He jumped in the pocket and stayed for the rest of the day and never took a break, which meant no one else got to get in and dig the pocket. Frank Perham(known as the godfather of Maine pegmatite mining) stopped by as he was in the vicinity and thought he would check on the progress being made at the Havey. Frank is a great person to have stop by as he has seen most of what has gone in in the Maine mining scene for over 60 years. Maine miners are lucky to have Frank who is not only knowledgeable but is also very generous with his knowledge and time. He had picked a good day to come. As we got deeper in the pocket the quality of the quartz went down hill. We were still getting some smokies but most of the quartz were small milky quartz crystals. The interesting thing is that some very interesting minerals can be found below the quartz layer, so that it is well worth the time to see what is down there. We would be working below where Jim is, off and on for another 18 months finding material, but that will be discussed in later post.

Frank Perham inspecting a quartz specimen while Jim Nizamoff continues to work in the pocket

One of the smokies Jim pulled out while I was getting lunch

The deeper we got in the pocket the closer to the present floor of the mine we got and the more difficult the water situation became.  We was into mid November and the temperature high on average was in the mid 40's and usually cooler in the bottom of the mine so any water was cold to be in. As the quality of the specimens were decreasing as we got deeper I decided to do some additional blasting in an adjacent area and quickly came upon another quartz pocket. This one wasn't nearly as big and was cleaned out in an afternoon but it did produce some beautiful smokies.

Smoky Quartz pocket and to the left of the stick is a smoky quartz crystal buried in cleavelandite and kaolin

You can start to see the smoky starting to take shape

The Smoky turned over and covered in cleavelandite

The smoky after being rinsed off.

Even though we were finding some great material I took a day to build up and grade the road before things froze up for the winter. This would make for a smooth and dry ride in plus it would make it easier to plow come snow. I wish some of the other miners would maintain there roads a little better(hint hint), it would make it more pleasant when going for a visit. I think some of them use it as a deterrent for visitors. The way into the Havey is lucky in that the road is relatively short in comparison to some of the other mines.

Ron Larrivee came over and we decided to try one more time working the bottom of Otto's pocket. As I was hammering on the side near the bottom of the pocket I broke into another pocket area which had some additional smokies. These smokies were not as clean looking and they didn't have the transparency of the smokies from higher up or the same clean crystal faces. This seems to be very consistent at the Havey quarry that the best smokies come from near the top of the pocket.

newly graded access road

Ron Larrirvee a long time miner stands in front of Otto's pocket(some of the face and top of the pocket has been blasted away). He stopped by to help out on a warm day in early December. Warm for December, as you can see Ron isn't dressed lightly.

Otto's Pocket

Fall 2010 Drill and blast than repeat and repeat and repeat again. I am making a nice trench along the mineralized zone but it is a little disappointing that no pockets are showing up. The south walls looks very promising it looks like the mineralized zone has taken a sharp dive down which if this holds out is a little disconcerting as it will mean that I will be going deep fast. The good news is that I have a good set up with a level bench to work the drill on, this is making relatively easy work of the drilling aspect and even though I am working with my favorite crew of Otto, Toot, me, myself and I, and only one of us is doing anything, things are moving along at a steady pace. Otto has to come and check things out about every hour to make sure everything is going all right and to get his back scratched. Toot usually hangs out in the truck unless there is a stick to be had. The one thing about not finding any pockets is you can sure move a lot of rock.

After a blast I usually check things over and throw some water over the blast area to see if there is anything hidden under the dust. It is amazing to see the water bring out any color that might be in the rock. Even though I have been blasting and working the edge of the mineralized zone it has been a slow year as far as pockets go. Of course being a miner you need to be an optimist and wonder what is hidden in the rock a few feet away. This gives us the motivation to do this difficult work, most people you could not pay them enough to do this type of work. Don't think it is all fun blasting the rock because at some point after it is blasted it needs to be moved. Getting the waste rock out of the mine is soooo boooooooooooring.

This picture was taken after dark  it is the just opened Otto's pocket looking at the edge of a large smoky parallel growth piece 

large smoky quartz below the cleavelandite has separated from the ceiling which is feldspar on one one side, and quartz and muscovite on the other

 Ray Sprague photo Although not a great picture here is the smoky from the above photos.

After a blast late in the afternoon in late October there was a large area of lepidolite that was loosened.  It did not want to come out easily and after some pawing with the excavator bucket it was removed. Behind this was a large area of feldspar and looking closer the feldspar happened to be fairly well broken up. This is a good sign and often means that you are on the edge of the pocket. As it was getting late in the fall it was quickly getting dark and I contemplated leaving but thought I would give it a few more minutes and see if anything showed up, all of a sudden I had broken into what would later be named Otto's pocket after my faithful dog who would spend much time with me working on this pocket.

I called Ray Sprague and he decided to come up and see what all the excitement was about. Smoky after smoky came out of the pocket and Ray would repeat over and over most excellent. It is days like these that we mine for. To be continued...

Ray Sprague photo

Ray Sprague photo

Ray Sprague photo

Ray Sprague photo My favorite from this this area with the darker and lighter smokies. The white is a clay kaolin which just washes off with water

Ray Sprague photo Me working Otto's pocket. A productive day of mining.

Scattering the Purple Apatite.

Summer 2010 It was decided that a small trench would be blasted through the mineralized zone to try and see what was going on. The dangers of doing this is not knowing what you might be blowing up. I tried to pick a spot that looked the least promising and did some drilling. While drilling you can watch the drill cuttings and get some idea of what you are drilling through, although at times it is hard to distinguish what you are exactly drilling. Things like muscovite,  schorl, and lepidolite are fairly easy to identify. It gets harder to try and figure out the different types of feldspar or mixtures with quartz  Most of the time the closer you are to the mineralized zone the quicker the rock drills. Of course everyone whether a miner or not dreams of the drill suddenly dropping as it falls into a pocket.

Dog Days of summer

In trying to blast through the mineralized zone I had a couple of blast that the bottom didn't come out as expected. This can be a nuisance as even though it has been blasted, sometimes it is loose under the surface but it didn't fracture the top. Doing additional blasting in the same area usually produces poor results as the area has already been fractured so the gas from the blast just expands into the fractures instead of blowing the rock out. Using a track drill can have it's drawbacks, while it makes easy work of the drilling, getting the drill to where I need to drill can be tedious. With the failure of the the last two blast to move the rock I wanted and the area fractured underneath I decided to blast in some solid rock on the other side of the hole that I had been working. Although I wanted to move the drill to an area less then 10' from where I had been drilling,  it would involve a tremendous amount of work since I had no way to get the drill there. I would have to take the drill out of the quarry cut some trees and blast in a new access to get where I wanted. It ended up taking almost two months for me to do this. Even though it was a lot of work it was work that I would have had to do as some point. It is just frustrating that in the heart of the mining season that I have to do a major change at the mine. There is nothing easy about mining but it is very exciting when you are in the zone.

After finally getting set up to drill, I drilled and blasted into some vuggy blue albite. This can be the home of apatites. I had already found a few before the blast in some of the vugs. After the blast I would find quite a few more but of course they were spread all over the opposite embankment. Most of these crystals were small in the 1/16" to 1/8" size but I did find a couple in the 1/4" size that were very nice. Mr. Apatite, Don Dallaire ended up with the best of these at a later point in time. Some of the rock hounds with Poland mining camps scoured the embankment for weeks looking for remnants that I missed.

Photo by Ray Sprague of a cluster of purple apatites that came out of this area

photo by Don Dallaire Close up view of  a purple apatite. This is in the collection of Donald Dallaire and is approximately 5mm across

Jim Nizamoff checking out the vuggy blue albite and Toot with a stick. Imagine that.

salamander looking for a place to hide in the vuggy albite

mineralized zone on the edge of the blast

Finally the blast went well and took out the rock that I wanted. I had a nice clean hole with a vertical face to work. I was set to be able to move some rock now. I was doing a series of blast  revealing the edge of the mineralized zone but this did not produce anything else of interest. Another area of blue vuggy albite showed up and even though there was some fairly large vugs nothing was found except for a few small quartz. After working this bench all the way to the wall it was time to move the drill back and start the next bench and hope something shows up.

Merry Christmas

The crew of the Havey Mine wish you all a Merry Christmas

Toot-Don't think that I am going out in the snow to pull any sleigh

Razzmatazz-I rather be mining.

photo by Jim Nizamoff Raymond Sprague-Can we go to Roy's yet?

Mike O'Neil-In Sarah Palin's words "drill baby drill"

Jeff Morrison

Jim Nizamoff-I'll let you know when I have this pocket cleaned out.

photo by Jim Nizamoff Encar Roda-PhD scientist extraordinaire 

100 Year Anniversary

Spring 2010 I am excited as this year starts.  I feel as this is the year of the big find . 100 years ago, in late summer 1910, Forrest Havey made a name for himself and the mine finding several major tourmaline pockets. The local and Boston papers had major articles on these finds. It was also reported in many papers throughout the rest of the country. Lewiston newspaper article Although the article talks much about value and carat weight many of the crystals were marketed to museums and universities. Some anonymous  university ended up with approximately 100 crystals from these finds. Much of the tourmaline found in  pockets is broken and does make excellent gem rough and many of the crystals from the Havey are very clean from inclusions giving them a higher value than included crystals from many localities. Prices mentioned in the article were retail prices and it was highly unlikely that revenues were anywhere near the estimated amount. It was interesting  to see that sensationalism in the news was very active back then as it is today.  This was a major tourmaline find and at the time one of the largest in Maine. This tourmaline also was of world class quality definitely some of the most desirable clarity and color. I had hoped to have hit a major tourmaline pocket before now but mining and finding can be two different things. At this point in time I had been mining for several years and I was ready to hit the big one. 2009 had given me a taste of what to look forward to and I was eager for more..

Things started off very early, February 13th to be exact. I have just gotten back from the Tucson Gem and Mineral show and after looking at the minerals out there and the warm weather I was ready to get started. We have not had any snow for over 3 weeks and there is very little on the ground. Very unusual for this time of year. If this is global warming it sure makes it nice in February. Still today is only in the 30's so it isn't really shorts weather. The first thing I needed to do was start lowering the floor which was not the best place to have to start this time of year. It meant pumping the water and moving the ice.  I am hoping that winter is over but it is still very early, On average winter holds on until the middle of March when things finally start warming and melting and heavy snow and freezing temperatures can linger into May. We are apt to get a foot of snow at any time and this would put a crimp in the mining. Thankfully the rest of the spring we had a couple of minor snow events with less than 2". Initiation for any new crew member is to jump through the hole in the ice and bring up some lepidolite, before the water is pumped down of course. Let's get Mikey, he will try anything and I believe he would if you told him there was something interesting down there.

Ice Fishing for Tourmaline. Who says mining in Maine isn't fun? Try and find Ray Sprague in this picture. The answer will be at the end of this blog entry. Very little snow for this time of year. The same date in 2008 had over 4' on the ground.

Montebrasite in blasted quartz under schorl


Rod Stone digging in the first quartz pocket of the year

Typically I don't like to work the mineralized area first thing and that was true this year. Until there are some warm days and the snow and ice are gone it can be difficult and uncomfortable. Ice can also trick you into thinking that it is some other interesting crystal. As the weather got a little more spring like some blast were done in the minerlaized zone and a small pocket of quartz was found. Nothing great came out but it was the start and it was still a long ways to the hundredth anniversary. Since starting to mine at the Havey there has always been promising areas to work. At times even as promising as it looks it doesn't always produce what you think it will. Getting an early start this year hopefully would prove fruitful.

schorl around the basalt dike

One of the quartz that came out of the pocket

 Of course you can't find Ray in the picture as Ray and winter mining do not go well together.