WHAT'S NEW

Here, we post new material or references to it, so that by checking here frequently you may know what additions we have made to the website. After a month or two, we will delete them in most cases. Expect a lot of periodic changes, improvements, and additions. We are absorbing the contents of the Original Site, updating the articles, and adding images whenever time allows.

Images are thumbnailed - left click on one to see full resolution picture. Last update: July 10, 2009

12: 2009 Northwestern trip

The AMFED (American Federation of Mineralogical Societies) National Show was a superb success. Below are some pictures of the exhibits.


Lunar specimen	Gem Mountain sapphires	Yogo sapphires	Bud Guthrie's "Fred"	Miner's Lunchbox golds	Min Rec corundums	American corundums

As Special Exhibits Coordinator for the show, I must thank all my friends who loaned specimens for the first five showcases. I am sorry the image quality is not up to the specimens portrayed. I must also thank Bill and Lois Patillo who drove up all the way from south Texas to display their "Rock Food Table" (first two pictures below).

We picked up a couple of neat specimens at the show, an Eldorado Bar (Missouri River, Montana) sapphire and a Winza (Tanzania) ruby for the collection. These are in the third and fourth images to the right. Our gold mine produced a 17.4 pennyweight nugget (last photo).

Coming soon

Call your Congressman!! The bad news is that the forests are under severe attack from pine beetles. Unless logging and firewood cutting policies are changed immediately, the forests may turn into meadows. There is already 80% or more forest kill in some areas. The spectacular pictures here were taken just west of Helena, Montana.

A long cold spell may kill the eggs, but in any event if next year is a dry one, I expect the forests may burn. If they do, the fires may not even be fightable. Firefighters on the ground would be in the paths of "widowmakers", and thermally induced currents and low visibility make overflights too hazardous. I am told this situation exists from central Colorado to northerm British Columbia.

11: New Taimil Nadu Ruby locality

Nikhil Jhaveri, a dealer friend from Mumbai, sent twelve crystals and clusters of pink to red ruby from a new locality inTamil Nadu Province, India. Some almost have the appearance of having been compressed while in a plastic state! Here are some photos. The two on the left are of the same specimen, and three others appear on the right. (7/10/09)

9: The North Carolina trip, May 2009 was a great success. Though we got rained out of a couple of field trips, I went with Ray Montoya to Chunky Gal Mountain and got a lot of ruby in smaragdite without the ruby; so if you want a smaragdite specimen for a paperweight or your garden, see me at the National Show in August (see Item 6 below). Ray is the owner of the Cherokee Mine on Caler Creek (go to URL http://www.corunduminium.com/CoweeValley.htm to see more info about this locality). He was my host, and he donated a fine, cherry red gem ruby to our collection (so what if he picked it out of the road as we were walking to the dig site?). I got a small sapphire in a bucket of his dirt. Both of these stones are in the first picture on the left below.

I found several interesting corundums for the collection from local dealers. and purchased additional specimens (not illustrated here) that we will be offering for the first time at the National Show. The second photo shows very rare subhedral/euhedral ruby crystals from Chunky Gal Mountain (most are in the 2 to 6 carat range). The third shows some superb euhedral, doubly terminated prismatic crystals and twins from the Cowee Valley (old collection, exact source unknown, 2 to 10 carat range). The fourth is a finely crystallized "Canton blue" cluster, likely from the site of the current Pressley Mine. The fifth is a matrix specimen from the Sheffield Mine, showing the lamellar flow of the granitic intrusive that brought the purplish rubies to the surface. The last shows two huge, pale geen sapphire crystals from Tanzania (the one on the left is 8 inches (20 cm.) high)! (6/6/09)

8: Remarkable Australian sapphires

A recent surfing of Ebay turned up the crystal on the left. It is from Yinnietharra, in a remote part of extreme western Australia. I ended up winning several lots, and here are pictures of some of the booty. There are more on the way, including parallel growth and "jackstraw" clusters the likes of which I have never seen in corundum before (far right image). The miners and I are collaborating on a more detailed article soon to appear on this website and sales of a few of these weird crystals. We will have some available for collectors by the end of March, 2009, and will be displaying them at the national gem and mineral show in July and August, 2009 (see item 6 below).

7: Specimens from our corundum collection are illustrated in a Supplement to the January/February, 2009 Mineralogical Record. The Supplement is devoted to privately held Texas collections, and it is spectacular - worth a look even if you don't like rubies and sapphires! Most of our specimens pictured there will be on exhibit at the AMFED National Show in Billings, Montana, July 30 - August 2, 2009. For more show info, see Item 10 above.

5: Badakhshan sapphires: Recently, a couple of very rare purplish pinkish specimens from this locale on the Afghanistan-Tazhikistan border were found. One or both will be in our display at the National Federation Gem and Mineral Show next summer (see Item 10 above). Most of the sapphires from this locality are mottled blue and white, so these are rarities among rarities!

4: 2008 Northwestern Trip: There are additions to the website as a result of my annual trip to the Northwest in July nad August, 2008 (the underscored terms are hyperlinks to details). Some great material came out of the Turret locality in Chaffee County, Colorado. A large sapphire crystal was found at Gem Mountain, Rock Creek, Montana. There's a new owner of the unpatented claims at Yogo Gulch, and he really knows what he is doing. We found some gold, digging casually on our own claims west of Helena. Pictures below show the general locality (note the brown trees as a result of a serious pine beetle kill - that's my friend Amos with the camera), the dig site, screening, washing, panning, and the final cleanup (the largest nugget is 3.6 pennyweights). It is not corundum, but it's still pretty neat!

3: Two important Kashmir sapphire crystals, the finest any of us have seen, recently came to our attention. They are pictured on the Kashmir page. They are for sale by the owner, and we have also posted them on the Rubies and Sapphires page (Kashmir items for sale).

2: There is a great new Tanzanian discovery. The site was known, but a new reserve of fine gem rubies has been found in Winza / Mpwapwa. It is briefly described on the Tanzania page. Some pictures will follow soon.

1: Massive North Carolina corundum: There are a couple of new and interesting discoveries in eastern North Carolina. One I visited with Rockingham resident Mike McDuffie on May 31, 2008. It has produced the two massive grey corundum specimens shown below (gifts of Mike McDuffie), and some interesting multicolored specimens I have not yet seen. The third specimen (also a gift from Mike) is from a nearby locality, which we shall describe later. What is interesting about these localities is that they are the easternmost in North Carolina we know about.