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Brazil is an amazing country for the gemologists to visit.
The variety of gemstones, the number of mines,
and the friendliness and openness of the people
is really a treasure.
During this last trip in April 2014, a highlight of the trip
was a visit to this tourmaline mine.
We only had one day to visit this mine,
but it was really amazing.
And just the production that comes out of this mine,
you can easily see it's one of the most prolific tourmaline
and gemstone mines in the world.
The excitement really mounted, especially
as we started to descend the ladders down into the mine.
We were following Beatrice, one of the mine owners.
We tried to keep up with Beatrice
as we were descending down into the mine and coming back up,
but she was in too good of a shape for us.
We navigated through a number of tunnels
where the mining was going on.
Some of these tunnels reached 500 meters in length,
and this pegmatite would reach 32 meters in width.
There were tourmaline crystals all throughout the walls
of these tunnels.
Then, we came to areas where the mining was actually
taking place.
They would create the tunnels by blasting,
but the mining was all done by hand tools digging
into the soft pegmatite to remove the tourmaline crystals.
All of their mining was done by hand so as not
to damage the tourmaline crystals.
Constantly using pick axes to dig away at the pegmatite
and get to the crystals of tourmaline.
Or sometimes also, they would find crystals of tourmaline
that were embedded in quartz.
Look at this a miner that was digging away
at this large quartz crystal that
had tourmaline crystals associated with it also
using water to wash away the dirt
and get better visibility of what they were digging out
of the wall of this mine.
Now the final extraction is going
to be breaking it away from the wall with the pick
and removing it by hand making sure not
to damage any of the crystals.
Washing it with water here, and take
a look at that long, green tourmaline crystal
right there in the quartz.
Look at this expression on Antonio's face.
He reached into a pocket and pulled out
some tourmaline crystals.
All the family members expressed every day
was an excitement, an adventure, to see what they could find.
Now he's feeling very large crystals in this pocket
but also a lot of smaller crystals.
So he's determining how they will
go about removing these crystals not to damage them
and to get all of the production they can out of this pocket.
Antonio is examining some of the material
that he's pulling out the pocket, looking in the pocket,
reaching in there, feeling some of the crystals,
looking at the rubellite crystals,
making decisions that-- how to extract it to now remove
some more of the quartz with tourmaline embedded,
some of the pegmatite around it with the pick
hammer to get better access into this pocket.
Intricate, almost surgical, work with the pick hammer
to get at these crystals.
Look at the wall around the pocket.
All of these black tourmaline crystals
could be rubellite or green colors behind them.
See the black tourmaline crystal just
to the left of this miner that could
be all rubellite or green tourmaline behind it.
But this miner is focused now on developing this pocket
and pulling the material out of it.
He has a handful of some of the smaller material for us
to take a look at, but this is just
the beginning of the larger crystals
that are inside this pocket.
After the day's mining we went to the processing plant
which, all those simple means washing in wire screens, very
effective to retrieve the production of the day.
In fact, you could see large crystals bouncing around
on the screen as it was being washed.
Look at the size of that crystal and look
at the numerous crystals in each screen.
Now they're washing off that large crystal
that has black and green and rubellite colors on it.
The size of these crystals were very
impressive as was the overall amount.
And according to the family, this
was not a highly productive day that we were there, but still,
numerous crystals just in this one basket being washed,
stacked up on the side of the barrel of water.
You hardly ever see this many crystals plucked out
of one basket after washing.
Now look at the handful of these crystals just
from one basket being washed.
You can understand how this mine produces
a total of eight tons of tourmaline crystals a year,
20% of that being rubellite color.
What an amazing extraction from just one basket.
Here you can see the typical coloring of the black going
into the green to the rubellite.
And this beautiful crystal shows you the multiple colors
of black to green, almost a colorless area
and then going into the rubellite crystal.
Look at the grin of Beatrice looking
at this crystal-- a beautiful specimen.
The mine also produces blue crystals, green crystals,
all colors of tourmaline coming from this mine
that-- the most amazing tourmaline mine I've seen.
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