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What's Your Carat Weight?
A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Gatlinburg, TN, where she and her family went gem panning. Gem panning stands are a familiar sight to anyone who's lived in or passed through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some are more tourist-trap than others. (There are at least two excellent ones in Spruce Pine, NC, but be wary of those in bigger cities.) These places are usually situated right beside highways and sport names like "Gem Mountain" or "Emerald Village." Gem panning is vaguely similar to gold panning in that both take place beside water, but the "stream" you use when gem panning is a wooden sluice with benches beside it to sit on. When you arrive, you purchase buckets full of your chosen stone(s); the choices usually range from mixed gemstones (best for beginners) to tourmaline, rubies, emeralds, and quartz, with prices varied according to the stone. Once you pay for your bucket o' stone, you'll get it, a couple of trowels, a place at the sluice and a wooden frame with a screen in the bottom. You dump the stone-and-sand (and sometimes mud) mixture into the screen, shake it around in the running water, and unearth (literally) your gemstones. It's a lot of fun, and I hit the gem panning places every time I get a chance. You're most likely to find, in a bucket of mixed gemstones: - Quartzes (rose, smoky, milky, quartz points) - Topaz - Emeralds - Sodalite - Mica - Rubies - Sapphires - Garnet - Amazonite - Aventurine Before your eyes turn to dollar signs at all those precious gems, though, keep reading. When you're finished, the place usually has helpful people available to tell you what you found. They usually also offer to cut and mount some of the nicer stones you find, such as the sapphires and rubies and emeralds. At this point, you're often given the carat weight of the stone as a convincing reason to have that stone cut. Wow, a ten-carat ruby! A five-carat sapphire! Sounds nice, doesn't it? Too bad it doesn't really work that way. The carat is a measurement of weight; it equals 0.2 grams. In other words, that's a very, very small weight. You could measure anything in carats - insects, candy, steamrollers - but carats are normally reserved for gemstones. Just because you have ten carats' worth of ruby, though, doesn't mean you'd come out with a ten-carat cut and polished ruby ring. That ten carats is the total weight of the uncut stone. The person cutting your gemstone has to hunt for usable material: clear, unflawed stone. With most gemstones, it's very hard to tell what's usable just by looking at the rough stone. Depending on your luck, the ruby you found might produce nine carats of stone, or one, or even less. It's up to you whether you want to take that chance. That's why gemstones like the 45-carat Hope Diamond are so special; the Hope has 45 carats of usable gemstone (not counting the fact that it was carved from a larger stone). Not happy with your chances of getting a spectacular cut emerald, but love the way the stone looks right now? Have it wire wrapped or rough-set by a jeweler or jewelry designer. Side note: Gemstones like amazonite or aventurine, which are naturally opaque, don't go through the same process. Since there's no hunting for the best parts, the entire stone (barring any major flaws) can be cut and polished. These gemstones are generally much less expensive to have cut and set. Back to Articles and Tips |