It's Tourmaline Time

Spring 2011 I had decided on changing the route for access to the bottom of the mine. This would involve removing a fair amount of ledge and this would enable me to lengthen out the road into the mine, therefore making for a shallower slope. I had a set date for this as a couple of different groups were scheduled to do field trips in the next month or so and I wanted the mine ready for them which would involve removing the rock that had been blasted through the winter and early spring.. Woody Thompson who was the man behind the Maine Mineral Symposium wanted a preview of the mine before the Symposium field trip to go over logistics. We set up a time to to get together and go over things. I was hoping to not take to long as I wanted to do a blast after he left. We got talking about different things one in particular was that they always seemed to find the good stuff at the mine he was visiting after he left.  By the time he left even though I had the holes drilled there was not enough time to do the blast. This was a little frustrating as this immediately put me behind schedule for getting in the new access. I headed up to the mine early the next day and did the blast and decided since I was behind I would double the size of the next blast to get back on schedule. In drilling for the next blast near the bottom of a couple of the drill holes I ran into some quartz and then some water. I thought this might be a quartz pocket  but didn't expect much as I thought that I was quite a bit above the mineralized zone. I put some stemming(this is small rock that we use to keep the blast confined) in the bottom of the hole, and in using this I was hoping to keep the blast from going in the bottom of the holes in case there was a pocket there. The blast went off fine and I did a quick look of the blast before packing up for the day. We had a Maine Mineralogical and Geological Society meeting and I needed to leave the mine early to get to the meeting on time.

The next morning I headed up to the mine to further investigate the blast. I got the pump out and started washing the blast pile down. After the blast everything is covered with rock dust so it can be very difficult to identify anything. Aside from cleaning the rock off, the water helps bring out any color that might be present. In one area I started to notice some gem tourmaline fragments. This was both a good and bad sign. Was this the remnants of the tourmaline pocket and did I blast it literally to pieces. The blast was fairly well contained which would mean that even though I had debris scattered for 30+ feet, if there was something blasted out it should be relatively easy to find. If the blast does not get sent to far you can typically follow where the material originated from. I concentrated on the area where the fragments were and washed away material for an hour or more just finding some additional small shards of tourmaline but it was leading me back to where the pocket was. After digging and removing loose rock for another hour I finally came to the remnants of the tourmaline pocket. There were a couple of large pieces of tourmaline laying in the kaolin on top of the pocket area. The Havey to date has not been know for it's extremely large crystals Getting some the size of your thumb is about as large as they get but this is nothing to scoff at. The larger crystals have a tendency to have more internal flaws, where the smaller material can be exceptional clean and make for some gorgeous gemstones.

An area of kaolin. Above this was some quartz crystals and below it would be the tourmaline.

Some of the first tourmaline to come out of the pocket.

It had been awhile coming but it was well worth the effort.

 Photo by Jan Morrison Me working the pocket.

As I continued to work the pocket it had two distinct areas, one side had absolutely no damage from the blast and this area had smoky quartz crystals still on the top. They were loosened from the blast so I was able to just pull them out. The quality of the smokies weren't that great but this was a tourmaline pocket and tourmaline was king in this pocket. Digging down there was a large mass of kaolin and you could stick your hand into the kaolin and pull out tourmaline. As I continued to work this section water kept seeping in and dissolving the kaolin, as this happened when you stuck your hand into the thin soup and felt around you could pull out a handful of almost solid tourmaline. Much of the tourmaline was broken into segments but there were a fair amount of crystals although most only had one end that was terminated. Some of the tourmaline was heavily included  and some was opaque but there where many pieces that where inclusion free. The other side of the pocket did not have nearly as much kaolin or as much tourmaline although there was a fair amount and some of this was attached to some of the quartz faces in the bottom of the pocket. This pocket was starting to turn into the real deal. It had been a long time coming and I was just soaking in the enormity of it all. I had spent countless hours drilling and blast, removing excess rock, hammering on promising looking rock and here was what I had been looking for. The Havey had been "the tourmaline mine" 100 years ago and had hardly produced anything since that era of mining ended.

There are stories of people calling all of their friends and mining acquaintances when they hit the big find, I didn't do that, I called my wife and just a couple of other people as I wanted to just enjoy the moment without a bunch of people running around. To date I had done 99% of the work myself and it was nice to be me, the mine and the tourmaline.

A tourmaline crystal in the matrix

A bountiful pocket. Photo taken late in the day so the color is not showing up real well.

photo by Raymond Sprague

photo by Raymond Sprague

photo by Raymond Sprague  

Needless to say my schedule to get the new access road into the mine would need to be put on hold. As I write this almost two years after the discovery off this pocket I am finally doing the blasting needed to  lengthen out the the way to the bottom of the quarry although with other work that has been done since them I am not sure if it will get used for this. The primary reason of removing the rock now is to get access to the mineralized area in hopes of additional pockets. To be continued....

Another quartz pocket

Early Spring 2011 Looking through the previous post, there is an abundance of quartz photos showing up and not much color. This post will be similar but have faith in the near future there will be some interesting colored minerals showing up. 

As the weather improved I was still working on trucking blasted material out of the mine. This time of year calls for some discipline when it warms up and you get a nice day there is the desire to switch direction and work where there is a chance of finding something. Most winters even the short ones are way to long, in the winter there is the need to stay away from the mineralized zone due to freezing temperatures and snow. It is very easy to lose things in the snow and if things freeze it is difficult to separate them. Since I get no sun in the winter even days when it is above freezing brings no relief. I always start doing some work in the mineralized zone before I am ready to work it full time, but I look at this as a reward and break from the tedious work and getting the mine ready for spring. Usually there isn't much to find but it is nice to see some color after looking at the drab colored rock for 3 months or more. The great thing about getting the mine empty is that then I have quite a bit of room for when I blast in the mineralized zone. Blasting in the mineralized zone typically is much smaller blast meaning it takes a while to fill the mine back up. Springtime can bring wet conditions and this year was no exception, we are actually getting more rain than usual. This makes it more difficult to work the lower areas until things dry out. 

Mining needs to be very fluid. Yes there is science and past experience that helps you determine where to go, but what you think will happen next, usually will change after some blasting occurs. This is what makes working a pegmatite both frustrating and exciting at the same time. The mineralized zone was changing, it had been very consistent for the last couple of years and all of a sudden there was a major change in the direction. I had been drilling and blasting in a straight line running parallel with the mineralized zone and now I chose to go perpendicular to the direction I had been heading and see if I could intercept where the mineralized zone was going. As I did a couple of blast it seemed that I was making contact with the new direction of the mineralized zone but it still was not doing what I thought it should. In trying to blast beside the mineralized zone the strength of the blast carried over into it loosening up some promising area.  After having a slow year last year except for the very end of the season it was nice to be able to get off to a good start with a lot of promising area to work.

Digging after the blast in a very promising area. As you can see even though the material from the blast is still in place, the material especially the quartz is very fractured. Seeing some staining on some of the quartz indicates that it had fractures previous to the blast and this could indicate a pocket is present.

Some very light smokies fresh from the pocket.

Some darker smokies out of the same pocket.

Barry Heath and Jim Nizamoff working in the quartz pocket.

Jim can feel the smoky but is having a tough time getting it out. Some of these can  be very difficult to remove.

An extraction. Not the best smokie but it is always great to get the first glimpse of something that was formed over 300 million years ago.

Mining must move foward

Winter 2010 So much for finding the big tourmaline pocket in the 100th anniversary year. A let down but the pegmatite looks very promising for next year. There is the possibility of Otto's pocket having tourmaline in the bottom. In the adjacent Berry quarry some of the tourmaline pockets had large quartz pockets above them.

 With the onset of winter and the colder temperatures it was time to start working on the overburden. Finding the smoky quartz pockets at the end of the season has got me excitied and I want to be ready for spring. I have been working in a trench and would need to widen this out if I was going to be able to work the mineralized zone. Right off the final drive broke on the excavator. This was not a good ending to the year. The final drive is was turns the track on the excavator and these are very expensive to replace. If you are careful you can hobble yourself around as long as you don't need to go to far. I was going to use this approach until it got closer to spring and it would be closer to going on a paying job. Some winters we can't mine much due to  the weather so I wasn't too worried about this.

No, this is not a piece of modern art, it is the track off of the excavator.

Started to work blasting the overburden at the end of December. At the beginning of January we had a spike int the temperature for a few days with some serious thawing going on. This was just what was needed as I was able to dig off some of the dirt overburden and expose the ledge that would need to be drilled and blasted. Loose dirt on top of the ledge does not go well with drilling holes for blasting. Sometimes it plugs up the drill if you aren't careful and then it has a tendency to fall into the new drill hole. Alas the snow moved in and I just came up for a weekly visits. The snow continued to pile up and decided I would need to wait for it to melt before I could do much work. The abutting property owner decided to cut much of the timber on his property which my access road goes across. He made a pretty good mess of things and did some damage to the road and drainage which would need to be dealt with in the spring. They said they would take care of it, needless to say they never came back. Although they didn't clear cut it, they did take out a tremendous amount of what was standing which took away much of the buffer between me and the neighbors. As with most places civilization is knocking on the door to the mine, creeping closer and closer as time moves forward. If you want to mine and be successful you are going to need to blast. The rock needs to be moved and blasting is a necessary evil, the closer the neighbors the more difficult this becomes.

Recently cut area, the mine is just behind the pines at the rear of the picture. The hill in the rear is adjacent to Mount Apatite, home of the world famous Pulsifer Quarry purple apatites. So much for the quiet meandering drive through the woods to get to the mine.

As it warmed up and the snow started to melt, blasting of the overburden resumed. As the pile got larger it starts to become demoralizing realizing that it all needs to come out. What I would give for a dump truck driver. Some of the material had some natural fractures causing it to come out in some very large pieces. There was one piece that probably weighed close to 20 ton and was much more than the excavator could lift. Much of the larger material usually comes from the outer zones of the pegmatite, is very hard and does not break easily. After dropping some fairly large rocks on it, the extremely large piece was broken into 1 ton pieces which were easily moved with the truck and excavator. Some people drill and blast these but it can be loud and  where I have close neighbors I take the quieter approach.

I get tired just looking at having to move it all.

Some of the last snow to leave as it is in a shaded area.  Spring is almost here.

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.