Gold in them thare hills


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Previous # Next ] [ Start New Thread ] [ TarBoard ]

Posted by Eric Abraham on June 19, 2006 at 13:51:11 from 63.245.133.143 user EricAbraham.

In Reply to: Re: Pommies and ceramic science posted by John Nichols on June 18, 2006 at 18:04:04:

When I had the house in Victor, Colorado, all the tourist shops sold old assay crucibles. These were about five inches tall, about three inches accross at the top and about one and a half accross at the bottom and made of a light colored clay. These did not seem to have lids, but were used and had melted samples in the bottoms, so were not enclosed in a furnace like Dick's was. Obviously an item to be thrown away after one use. Walking around town, one could find shards of these crucibles everywhere.

This was gold mine country - the gold being chemically combined in the rock (called telluride) which had to be crushed and then smelted to remove the gold. The folks who discovered the gold in 1891 knew what they were looking for as there was no "free" gold that the average guy could recognize. These mines were operational from the 1890's through the 1940's or so and have since been reactivated and are going strong with a huge leach pile halfway between Cripple Creek and Victor (the ore is crushed and the gold leached out with a cyanide solution and recovered from the cyanide which is recycled - extremely toxic).
At one time I possessed a small graphite crucible of about one or two gallon plus capacity, dated 1893, which I recently gave to a sculptor who does bronze. These would not have been used for assay purposes.

I would doubt if the English crucibles for assay purposes would differ much in design - I just found a picture on Google of one that looks just like the ones I described above -- www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=38892 The one pictured is from Australia and made in 1940.

Eric Abraham - Central Kansas, where the only mineral mined is Limestone


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
Eel-Mail:

Existing subject (please edit appropriately) :

or is it time to start a New Thread?

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

post direct to TarBoard test post first

Before posting it is necessary to be a registered user.


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TarBoard ]

Courtesy of Environmental Science, Lancaster

space