Garnet as gemstones. The gemstone varieties occur in shades of green, red, yellow, and orange. In the US it is known as the birthstone for January. It is the state mineral of Connecticut, New York's gemstone, and star garnet (garnet with rutile asterisms) is the state gemstone of Idaho. Garnet sand is a good abrasive, and a common replacement for silica sand in sand blasting. Alluvial garnet grains which are rounder are more suitable for such blasting treatments. Mixed with very high pressure water, garnet is used to cut steel and other materials in water jets. For water jet cutting, garnet
Garnet America, China and western India. These crystals are crushed in mills and then purified by wind blowing, magnetic separation, sieving and, if required, washing. Being freshly crushed, this garnet has the sharpest edges and therefore performs far better than other kinds of garnet. Both the river and the beach garnet suffer from the tumbling effect of hundreds of thousands of years which rounds off the edges. Garnet has been mined in western Rajasthan in northwestern India for the past 200 years, but mainly for the gemstone grade stones. Abrasive garnet was mainly mined as a secondary product while mining for