Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Science
Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Lead -- Metallurgy; Lead mines and mining
Recently I examined the Jackson Revel mine, which has been considered
a silver mine for the last fifty years. It lies about seven miles
south of Fredericktown, and is a fissure-vein in Algonkian felsite,
where it protrudes, as a low hill, through the disseminated limestone
formation. A shaft has just been sunk about 150 ft. at less than
1000 ft. from the feather edge of the limestone. The vein is narrow,
only one to twelve inches wide, with slicken-sided walls, runs about
N. 20 deg. E., and dips 80 to 86 deg. eastward. White quartz forms
the principal part of the filling; the vein contains more or less
galena and zinc blende. Assays of the clean galena made by Prof. W. B.
Potter show only 2.5 oz. silver per ton, or no more than is frequently
found in the disseminated lead ores. As the lead in this fissure vein
may be regarded as of undoubted deep origin, and it is practically
non-argentiferous, this would seem to remove the last objection to
the theory of the deep-seated source of the lead in the disseminated
deposits of southeast Missouri.
MINING IN SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI
BY WALTER RENTON INGALLS
(February 18, 1904)
The St. Joseph Lead Company, in the operation of its mines at Bonne
Terre, does not permit the cages employed for hoisting purposes to be
used for access to the mine. Men going to and from their work must
climb the ladders. This rule does not obtain in the other mines of the
district. The St. Joseph Lead Company employs electric haulage for
the transport of ore underground at Bonne Terre. In the other mines
of the district, mules are generally used. The flow of water in the
mines of the district is extremely variable; some have very little;
others have a good deal. The Central mine is one of the wettest in the
entire district, making about 2000 gal. of water per minute. Coal in
southeastern Missouri costs $2 to $2.25 per ton delivered at the mines,
and the cost of raising 2000 gal. of water per minute from a depth
of something like 350 ft. is a very considerable item in the cost of
mining and milling, which, in the aggregate, is expected to come to not
much over $1.25 per ton.
The ore shoots in the district are unusually large. Their precise trend
has not been identified. Some consider the predominance of trend to be
northeast; others, northwest. They go both ways, and appear to make
the greatest depositions of ore at their intersections. However, the
network of shoots, if that be the actual occurrence, is laid out on a
very grand scale. Vertically there is also a difference. Some shafts
penetrate only one stratum of ore; others, two or three. The orebody
may be only a few feet in thickness; it may be 100 ft. or more. The
occurrence of several overlying orebodies obviously indicates the
mineralization of different strata of limestone, while in the very
thick orebodies the whole zone has apparently been mineralized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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