Getting Gold: A Practical Treatise for Prospectors, Miners and StudentsJohnson, J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Francis)
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Getting Gold: A Practical Treatise for Prospectors, Miners and Students
Johnson, J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Francis)
Gold mines and mining
The writer has had small practical experience of the working of that
excellent hydraulic motor, the Pelton wheel, but if by horse-power in
the table given is meant nominal horse-power, it appears to be high.
Working with 800 cwt. stamps, 80 blows a minute, one horse-power nominal
will be found sufficient with any good modern engine, which has no
further burden than raising the stamps and pumping the feed water. It is
always well, however, particularly when providing engine power, to err
on the right side, and make provision for more than is absolutely needed
for actual battery requirements. This rule applies with equal potency to
pumping engines.
TO AVOID LOSS IN CLEANING UP
The following is a hint to quartz mill managers with respect to that
common source of loss of gold involved in the almost inevitable loss
of mercury in cleaning up operations. I have known hundreds of pounds'
worth of gold to be recovered from an old quartz mill site by the simple
process of washing up the ground under the floor.
If you cannot afford to floor the whole of the battery with smooth
concrete, at all events smoothly concrete the floor of the cleaning-up
room, and let the floor slope towards the centre: where a sink is
provided. Any lost mercury must thus find its way to the centre, where
it will collect and can be panned off from time to time. Of course an
underground drain and mercury trap must be provided.
IRON EXTRACTOR
When using self-feeders, fragments of steel tools are especially liable
to get into the battery boxes or other crushing appliance where they
sometimes cause great mischief. I believe the following plan would be a
practicable remedy for this evil.
By a belt from the cam or counter shaft, cause a powerful electric
magnet to extract all magnetic particles; then, by a simple ratchet
movement, at intervals withdraw the magnet and drop the adhering
fragments into a receptacle by automatically switching off the electric
current. A powerful ordinary horseshoe magnet might probably do just as
well, but would require to be re-magnetised from time to time.
TO SILVER COPPER PLATES
To silver copper plates, that is, to amalgamate them on the face with
mercury, is really a most simple operation, though many batterymen make
a great mystery of it. Indeed, when I first went into a quartz mill the
process deemed necessary was not only a very tedious one, but very dirty
also.
To amalgamate with silver, in fact, to silver-plate your copper without
resort to the electro-plating bath, take any old silver (failing that,
silver coin will do, but is more expensive), and dissolve it in somewhat
dilute nitric acid, using only just sufficient acid as will assist the
process. After some hours place the ball of amalgam in a piece of strong
new calico and squeeze out any surplus mercury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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