Quartz 101: How Does Silica Prima Mine Crystals?

TL:DR ~ At Silica Prima, we mine Quartz directly from mines in Arkansas. Our uncut, unpolished, natural crystals are hand-selected and washed in a solution to clean them.

Stage 1: Sourcing Quality Crystals

We start with prospecting different mines across Arkansas. Brock, our founder and CEO, works directly with mine owners, paying them to break open pockets of quartz for sample collection.

Not every deposit is the same, and some veins hold larger pockets of crystals than others. In order to find the best crystals, we use geological surveys and field research to discover the best Quartz in the Southern USA.

Tourist-focused mines like Ron Colemans Mine in Central Arkansas offer 'dig-your-own-crystals' for families and rockhounds.

• Instead of digging into pockets directly, they allow day-visitors to sift through 'tailings'. These are mounds of dirt fresh from the bottom of the mine pit, brought to the top of a mountain for tourists to dig through and possibly find a large crystal.

  
  

• While smaller quartz rocks are common, every blue moon a lucky person will discover a large crystal like this one, featured on our youtube channel.

When looking for plates and clusters, working directly with mine owners to expose quartz veins is the best method.

Once broken off the side of a mountain, quartz crystal is carefully chiseled and collected through various methods:

• Miners remove exterior quartz clusters and chunks from quarried stone. Working alongside the vein, pockets can be slowly 'peeled' back to reveal crystals on large 'plates' of stone.

  
  

• Hammer & chisels works to break open hard-pockets or snap-off crystals that are quality points, but might be surrounded by broken/bad fragments.

Stage 2: Preparation & Cleaning

Preparation for cleaning begins at the mine. We separate pieces by size / weight and store crystals in organized containers for washing.

Once bulk material is labeled for lab testing, we wrap valuable minerals inside of wax paper for transport to our cleaning station.

We use non-acidic cleaning agents to remove the red dirt from our crystals (the reddish hue/stain on unwashed quartz is from iron-oxides in clay, sometimes inclusions on the inside cannot be washed).

Once everything from a batch is rinsed and dried, we neutralize the cleaning agents before safely disposing waste. We love the outdoors and want to protect our local wildlife & environment.

Our goal is to deliver crystals directly from the mine in the condition we found them. We NEVER polish or cut crystal points, all Silica Prima products are natural, raw, unpolished, uncut, Arkansas-Quartz.