Garnets and rutiles new pics page 5

Some of the rare formulations must be valuable. For instance, have they discovered blue garnets somewhat recently ? Or Malaia, due they command high prices ?
Certainly a stone that has so many variations of rich colors has to have rare and costly forms.

I suppose this answers the question on blue garnets- www.civilminerals.com/id105.html
They are tiny and fetch incredible prices. The color is a light blue. Google images show darker blue faceted images, hmmm.

i remember as a kid they said garnet does not occur in blue. And I remember a news blip that blue had been discovered.
Strange that you could retire with a hand full of the right garnets. But we filled a bucket of old iron garnets this weekend.
Great ammunition for a sling shot, and that's about all.

Never knew Madagascar was such a rich gem location. and a diverse mineral spot too.

Large gem grade garnets are really rare. The size seems to impact cost greatly, true for all gems.
Odd thing about garnets, they may form in such large quantities. And if a deposit of a rare garnet was found in mass it would be incredibly valuable.

I understand the US is not the place for the finest garnets.

Imagine poking around in one of these locations and finding a large trove of say Demantoids, what a rush that would be.
I can not think of a better way to get rich.

I took Jimi garnet hunting Sunday. Looking for a higher grade. We drove miles on soil roads. Stopped at many schist veins where the garnets in the area form.
To no avail, all about the same heavy iron garnets. The garnets in Georgia seem to get higher in quality as the topography gets steeper, the higher the hills,
the glassier the garnet in many cases.

The movie 'Deliverance' was filmed in high grade garnet territory for instance. It drains from the area close to the Cowee Valley.
The mountains that it drains are about impossible to explore. Am certain that many garnets remain unfound in those areas,
not to mention the dense forests that make mineral exploration impossible. The intense networks of creeks would yield many
garnets to chase upstream, but there is a great portion that the creeks would not come in contact with matrix. Many spring heads in the
higher elevations that are unable to wear rock enough to wear garnets out of their matrix, where garnets occur.

Having romped around the granite quarries as a kid me used to find black tourmaline crystals 6 inches in diameter and several feet long.
Or the Hog Mine that has low grade aquamarine crystals 6 feet long and 8 inches in diameter. As you move north to the mountains extreme formations
exist there too.

gingerkid

I handed them over to my wife so now I'll have to find them. Hopefully they didn't get washed in the washing machine.

This looks like a good habitat for garnets in Appalachia. Folded and angled schist in thick layers in high elevation creek.
Never been to this spot but would give it a high probability for garnet production.



Another folded up schist layer on the Chattahoochee River in north Atlanta. This one full of what looks like pyrope/almandine mixes.
This schist ridge runs a good distance and is also cut in half by Rottenwood Creek about a mile NWW of this river cut.
Rottenwood requires no kayak though, and is rich in various colors of fine quartzite and felspars.

Yes gingerkid, exactly like that. Maybe much finer. Check em out

www.civilminerals.com/id105.html

check out the prices, then the size-yo

Guessing that the spessartine is having an effect on the surface 'shingles'. Maybe other garnet forms do that too.
Those are some tiny 'in the rough' stones too bring so much money. I got croaker sacks full of them not really.

jamesp anything you could grab with your fingers?

That is Buck Creek @ 3400 feet elevation Jimi. Off Hwy 64 east of Chatuge about 10-15 miles in Nantahala Nat Forest.
Buck Creek Road runs next to it. no big stuff. tested about 25 creeks in the area. Buck creek had the highest density.
Most of the roads I was heading for were closed due to ice.

I would say those are the classic rhodolite garnets that gemfeller mentioned. color named after local rhododendron flower color.
My days of romping these steep hills are over, you might want to give it a try. These are 2-3mm gem grade garnets. You just need to
find 8-10mm size and then you are on to something. Basically hiking the area and tracing their source starting with big creeks.
Conditions favorable for gem grade garnets, just need to find the bigger ones.

Better done in the summer. garnets settle like gold since they are heavy. So getting in the creek and finding pockets in the creek where
the bigger garnets settle is the way.

gemfeller's mention :

I'm a real garnet freak. Is Chatuge anywhere close to Cowee Creek in N.C., where "rhodolite" garnets were "discovered" and mis-named? Garnet species can form solid-solution series' that allow them to commonly mix with each other. Rhodolite is a varying mix of the almandine and pyrope species, both of which are pretty dark-toned as the chemistry nears end-member form. But for some strange reason intermediate blends of the two yield lovely light-toned red-purple gems, which sounds a lot like what you found as a kid.

I say rhodolite was mis-named because the same pyrope/almandine blends had been found in India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere since before Roman times. Now garnet experts refer to pyrope-almandine and another species' blend pyrope/spessartine (mis-named Malaia Garnet) as intermediates -- they're not true species. Both rhodolite and malaia are trade-names.


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