Digging for treasures from the earth is truly a wonderful thing, and I feel fortunate to be able to do it as much as I do. And of all rock I've dug, the dolostone of the Herkimer belt in NY is my favorite. For those of you familiar with digging Herks, I hope you find something new here. For the rest of you, grab a drink, sit back, and enjoy.

But first I must say a word about safety. Breaking rock is a fairly dangerous form of recreation and some common sense goes a long way. Always wear safety glasses and steel toed boots, and good gloves. Look around before swinging a sledge hammer or dropping a boulder. And maintain your steel. This picture of my hand shows what happens when the striking end of a chisel is not up to par! But enough of that.

The dolomite limestone of Herkimer is a hard, fine grained, sedimentary rock, and being sedimentary means that it's layered. Generally speaking, some layers contain no crystals, some contain lots of crystals. Pocket layers are well defined. The two classic sites in Middleville are perfect examples of this. People have chased the main pocket layer a hundred feet into the hill, creating an ever higher wall which needs to be removed to get to the pockets. Currently, there is anywhere from 8 feet to 15 feet of rock sitting on top of the pockets, rock which rarely contains good crystals. Roughly a foot above the main pockets is a thin layer of mud (the mud seam) which separates the rock above from the rock below. Don't bother looking for crystals for at least 20 feet above the mud seam. Below the seam is where the fun is! The main pockets are only a foot or two below the seam. Another foot down and the "ledge layer" is found. Lots of really bright, clear, jewelry size crystals come from here, as well as the beautiful matrix pieces with the black lined holes with stunningly clear crystals in them. Another foot down and there is a layer which contains randomly spaced pockets that range in size from a couple of inches to a foot or more across. On occasion, these can contain exceptional crystals, and I always hope to pop into one! Another foot and a half down is the floor of both Middleville mines. However, I have hit a 5 foot pocket below this floor.

Generally, the way to attack this rock is simply to lift it layer by layer. Start by removing the big upper layers using the mud seam, then nibble thru the crystal bearing layers. But how do you lift a 10 foot thick layer of rock, without any power tools? You do it the same way you'd break a half-ton boulder in half, with a feather-and-wedge. Normally this technique is used by drilling round holes, and then dropping a pair of steel "feathers" into the hole, and driving a steel wedge between them.

In Herkimer, however, a method has evolved that is tailored to the non-powered miners. Rather than round holes, slots are cut, and flat feather-and-wedges are used. The art of this type of mining is knowing how big and how many slots are required to move or break any particular rock, being able to cut slots quickly, and then putting the correct feather-and-wedges into these slots. The sound of solid rock getting torn apart is often as satisfying as actually finding crystals! And to roll a rock the size of a mini-van so that it's out of the way is truly a wonderful thing. Obviously, this process involves a lot of hard work, there is no way around it. But with the right tools and some experience you could get some really good Herkimer diamonds too. So here is what you'll need:

TOOLS