We couldn't resist following up on an invitation to go to a sapphire mine while we were in Montana.
The miner is Bill, a friend of my husband's. He is not a professional miner. He is a retired health care professional who took out a lease on a federal mining claim, built his own sorting machines, and provides all the manual labor a mine like this takes. (And it takes a lot.)
We spent the morning with Bill. Here's what we saw.
Hundreds of pounds of rocks scooped up and put through the sorters...and the result? The three small (less than one carat in the rough) sapphires shown in the last photo.
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Looks like a frustrating activity, but glad he got some small rewards.
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