Wrangell Garnets, Polished and Natural

After a little over a month of grinding and polishing in the vibrating tumbler the Garnets are finished and here is the results pictured against the host stone for comparison. The key to keeping them from becoming garnet dust was using plastic pellets. They still have imperfections due to the crazing inherent in the crystals from the local mine but came out with a fairly good polish. I plan on another trip to the mine sometime this spring to get some more specimens and maybe start another load in the tumbler. The garnets from our local mine are represented in the Smithsonian.