Crystal Mining Info

This is one of the many primitive mines that are scattered all across South America. This Clear Quartz mine is in Brazil.

This is the view down the shaft.  The temperature can range around 35 - 40 Degress Celsius, it's pretty grueling work.

Miners live within makeshift houses on site. Sometimes large groups of men share one house and they do so for weeks on end during the mining season.

Now we move on to another part of Brazil hundreds of miles South. Here they find mainly Amethyst and Agate in much larger mines penetrating the same valley.

This photo shows the Tailings of 3 different mines in this valley.

This is a close-up of the Tailings of one of the bigger mines still in operation in this valley.

The entrance to one of the mines.

Small strips of Amethyst can be seen on the walls all over the mine. These are too small to make it worth their while extracting.

Here we have a Large Amethyst Geode in the process of being extracted. As you can see, the Geodes are encased in solid Basalt rock. It can take weeks to carefully extract.

Freshly extracted Amethyst Geodes.

A Massive 3-pointed Amethyst Geode that this miner has been working on for more than a week, and is yet to complete.

It is a huge task mining these Geodes out of the ground and processing them to be cut open, polished and shaped with concrete bases so they can stand up. From there it gets transported hundreds of miles through the forest to the coast; where they are packed and loaded onto a ship to be brought to our lovely home here at Crystal Light.

Now we move hundreds of miles to the north of Brazil where they mine Massive Earthkeeper Quartz Crystals.

Have you ever seen a 6 Ton Quartz Crystal Point before?

An immense amount of physical labour and planning goes into extracting these Behemoths without damaging their fragile points.

These unique pink coated crystals weigh around 4 Tonne. Below the pink coating lies an impressive Quartz Crystal.

This is a warehouse filled with hundreds of Tonnes worth of Amethyst Geodes. They are then processed to be cut in half by the two men you can see in the left of the photo.

This is large 1 meter Diamond Cutter is what they use to slice the Geodes in half to reveal the beautiful druse cavities within.

Now we move to the other side of the world, China. Below is a stockpile of various rough minerals waiting to be shaped and polished into Pyramids, Angels, Pendulums, Spheres and more...

This is one of the sorting areas, where the higher grade pieces are put aside to be used in the more elaborate creations...

These are some of the Cutters & Polishers busy doing their thing.

Here's a closer view of one of the Cutters trimming up some Jade.

As Neil goes on his buying trips around the world he will bring back more photos to share with you, so watch this space for new & exciting pictures and info.

(Image shows Neil with one 3 Tonne Crystal. There were roughly 20 of these on the yard)