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Brazil is a prolific producer of many types of gemstones
and large amounts of gemstones.
I've been visiting this country for a couple of decades
and documenting productions of emerald, topaz, tourmaline,
amethyst, alexandrites, and many other types of gemstones.
In this video, Dr. Tao, let's take everyone to the Cruzeiro
Tourmaline Mine.
This is one of the largest tourmaline mines in the world.
The massive production of eight tons of tourmaline each year
is very impressive.
And all these tourmalines are found in pegmatites.
And if you go to the mine, you will see how big and wide
these pegmatites veins are.
And some of them can reach the width of 30 meters.
Brazil is a country with strict environmental regulations
for mining.
And Tao, it's always a pleasure to visit a mining area where
the people take such great pride in the natural beauty
around them.
It's very fascinating for me to see all their rubellite variety
tourmaline goes to the China market,
to fuel the appetite of our consumers.
At the Cruzeiro Tourmaline Mine, we
followed one of the mine owners, Beatrice,
down the mining shaft and the tunnels
to reach the mining areas.
Although we found that keeping up with her
proved to be quite difficult.
While blasting was used to tunnel into the pegmatite,
the actual mining and extraction of tourmaline
was done by hand, using a pick, as Antonio is demonstrating.
The mine was extensive, with several tunnels
at different levels.
As you walked through the tunnels,
black tourmaline crystals were visible in the walls.
The crystals may be red and green colors inside the tunnel
wall, terminating in the black color.
While we were there, a miner worked
on removing a large quartz crystal
with intergrown tourmaline crystals, using a pick.
Another miner sprayed water on the crystal,
removing dirt and making it more visible,
as it was breaking away from the wall.
The miner carefully removed the crystal from the mine wall,
being very careful not to drop it,
and then showed us the green tourmaline crystals
embedded in the quarts.
The washing process was very simple, but also very
effective.
Just using two screens, a couple of barrels of water,
and some human muscle, all of the washing of the ore
was accomplished.
With just the two screens loaded and being washed,
we saw numerous tourmaline crystals--
including some very large ones-- that
were further washed and also tourmaline
crystals that were being stacked alongside of the water barrel.
It was amazing to see so much gemstone crystals coming out
of just these two baskets being washed.
One of the mine owners, Douglas, then
gathered these crystals up in his hands
for further inspection and showed them to us.
Quite an exhilarating sight to see,
from just a couple of minutes of a couple of baskets
being washed.
The size of some of these tourmaline crystals
was very impressive to us, although Douglas said they
were small, compared to others.
This beautiful crystal shows how often
they terminate in a black color, with green, colorless,
and rubellite colors also present.
You can see how Beatrice is pleased with this stone,
from her smile in background.
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