DURING SEASON 2008 we invested in 14 days of mechanized operations at Topaz Mountain Gem Mine. We continued work on the north and west edge of the terrace. I had intended to resume work at the bottom of the dig, but encountered much more ground water this season. We had to leave this area alone until late August when it began to finally dry out.

We also hosted several clubs and over 100 visitors to the claim. As before, they got to "help" me mine. If they found something great, I gave them the opportunity to purchase the stones at a reasonable price. One individual found a superb sherry-colored 240 carat topaz crystal. Otherwise, I gave away lots of samples of small stones and some pretty large "clunkers."

I wasn't able to have someone on site as much as I did last season due to an injury, so most of the summer, the mine was idle while I mined amazonite. During this time, I arranged trips for clubs which inquired.

Production was about the same as previous seasons. We found good quantities of smaller stones, about 40 percent were of great cutting quality. Another 20 percent would cut, but the resulting stones would be slightly included or would be smaller. I had several large stones of over 40 carats cut.

I have found the backhoe is ideal for mining at Topaz Mountain Gem Mine. We use the bucket teeth to rake a couple feet of a bench across the hole about two inches deep. If we encounter good-looking gravel, we run this through the shakers. Sometimes we will even spot a large topaz while raking.

Towards the end of the summer, my friend Carl finished work on his "magic topaz machine." (I even wrote a few words for an old tune about Carl and his magic topaz machine.) The contraption is a scaled-down version of shakers used by gravel operations. It was a resounding success. It will process gravel as fast as you can shovel it in. The only time we had trouble was when we were in wet gravel (frequently, unfortunately). We got around this by stockpiling the gravel, allowing it to dry, and rescreening the gravel. The greatest fun I had was watching some youngsters sit at the spillway and pick out the topaz as they came tumbling down the chute.

Although we were able to get equipment in to the mine this season, and we had the use of a mechanized shaker, production was still below expectations. We found hundreds of carats of small stones, but only a few large (over 200 carats) stones. Carl made several trips throughout the fall and into the winter with the shaker and continued to process the gravel we had dug. We learned that even after two times through, small stones were still showing up.