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Show MINING REVIEW. INTER-MOUNTA- IN no risk has been incurred. With slow heat thus applied, dynamite may be heated to temperature of boiling water with safety. Do not use frozen powder to load a hole. It is unfit for use. If it explodes at all it will do poor work. If it does not seemingly burn or explode, it may be smouldering or decomposing, and the dropping in of a spoon, a drill or the stroke of a pick or hammer may be sufficient to explode what is left The Chemical Assay What is It? BY JAMES W. NEILL. or term chemical assay, leaching assay, is quite a new one to the mining vocabulary, it having had its introduction since the cyanide The process became better known. What does this term signify? What is the method? What the result, and what the consequence, following these all? I think that there is not a reputable assayer in this town who is not daily asked if he makes a chemical assay, and I am not acquainted with one of them who does not in such cases lose the customer. Why is this? Because the chemical assay gives higher results! Are these results correct? The man who gets them and believes what the chemical assayer writes him on the certificate, says, He argues that the fire why not? assay may be wrong; that we have no means of knowing that it is not wrong, except the repetition of the same, which proves nothing; that certain ores may have gold contents (for this chemical assay is a gold assay) which are volatile, and these values the fire assayer loses, while the chemist saves them. What proof have we that the fire assay for gold is not and has not always been wrong, that is, too low? The best proof that this is not the case I find in the fact that the best known process for the saving of gold on a large scale, that is, the smelting process, checks n the fire assay. It is a fact to the metallurgist that the smelter saves all the gold in the ore, as shown by the fire assay when good work is done, and ail the gold in the ores smelted is taken into account. Many smelters make a "plus in gold, that is, an apparant saving of over 100 per cent, but this is due to the fact that they do not take into account such quantities of goid as are not paid, for, being below their schedule prices, and further to the fact that with such small amounts the variation in the assayers scales is greater than in the output of the furnaces. The theory that some of the gold could be volatilized in the assay-er- s crucible cannot here hold good, for the smelting furnace is always run with a cold top, and the loss of gold through the masses of cold and damp ores in the top of the furnace is a practical impossibility. If these ores contained as much gold in excess of the fire assay as the chemical assayer would have us believe, where does this gold go to? In opposition to the work of the smelting furnace we can see that the best exploited chemical process of today, i. e., the cyanide process, does not well-know- check up to the fire assay, but, on the contrary, gives results varying in losses from 10 to 30 per cent. 5 Mining and Metallurgical Patents. List of patents relating to mining. ReWhy, then, should a variation of this ported for the Mining Review by311J. F. and Corker, patent solicitor, office No. process, or of some similar chemical 312 Atlas block. Salt Lake City, Utah. process used to make or to assist an 15 cents each. Copies furnished for assay, give better results on a small No. 564,423. Process of Separating scale than it will do on a large scale? Ores, Thomas A. Edison, Llewellyn Is there any reason why such a Park, N. J. A process of separating copper pyrimethod of manipulation should give retes from iron pyrites, consisting In sepsults many times those of the fire asarating a crushed ore, containing both say, taken for granted that both are pyrites, into different lots, each containing particles of approximately the honestly carried out? I say no! Every same size, and then heating the lots of point of the process of fire assay is material separately to make the copper more precise than any chemical manippyrites magnetic, while the iron pyrites ulation can ever be. The most expert remains and subsequentthe copper pyrites by chemists of Germany consider results ly separating action. magnetic of chemical analyses which only differ A process of treating ores containing by .05 per cent as very satisfactory, but copper and iron pyrites and other nonthe amount represented by the magnetic metallic ore, consisting in crushing the ore, then separating valuation of $1 in is first gold it into separate lots, each with partionly equal to .00018 per cent, cles of approximately the same size, and our chemical assayer thinks then heating the ore until the copper becomes magnetic, while the nothing of giving such a result! Where pyrites then iron pyrites remain will the prospector who deludes himself from the the copper pyrites separating with such returns finally land? rest of the ore by a magnetic separator, Suppose that he has a good vein of then heating the tailings to make the ore and has developed it to a consider-- a iron pyrites magnetic, and then sepathe reble extent, so much so that he is con- rating the iron pyritesorefrom a magby fident that he can extract ore sufficient maining netic separator. No. 564,508. Combined Auger and to warrant the erection of a mill? Or for Mining Purposes, Robert suppose he decides that it is high grade Reamer H. Elliott, Birmingham, Ala. enough (by chemical assay) to warIn a mining machine, the combina-tio- n with rant shipment to the smelter, or again, with a hollow thereend near the forward that he wishes to obtain capital to apertures to the escape of fluid thereallow of, build his mill, what will he have to do? from and means for revolving the said At the smelter he will have to sell his drill spindle in either direction; of ore on a fire assay. The expert sent means of regulating the feed of said an auger re volubly conto examine his mine for the capitalists spring-operate- d nected to said will take his samples and will have a cause to the pawls adapted le fire assay made on them. When he has said auger to revolve with said in one direction only, and an his mill running he will find that it or extensible extensible cutting-blad- e will return him say 80 per cent of the cutting-bladee, s, mounted in said fire assay, and. woe betide that unwith means for forcing the desaid lucky prospector if the fire assay does sired.blade or blades outward when not run enough to pay. That is the ultool secured to the And a timate outcome of the matter, and, de- front end boring an exof said or extensible cuttinglude himself as much as he likes before tensible cutting-blad- e mounted in said this end comes, the final arbiter of his -blades, means for forcing the said with fortunes must and always will be the blade or blades outward when desired; fire assay. What then of the man who a detachable feed-nadapted to givea makes these chemical assays? If he the desired feed to the boring tool, a holding is honest in his belief in them, he should hinge collar provided with to be and clamped on adapted be taught better, if this be possible. If the face, when desired, and he gives these results because he there- means for checking the longitudinal of said collar, due to the forby earns a better living at a less ex- movement of the ward feed pense to himself, then, and that is the No. 564,758. Mining Machine, G. F. usual case I think, the chemical as- Myers, Pittsburg, Pa. A method of bearing in, which consay er is no better than a bunko sharp siof non-magnet- ic, non-magnet- non-magne- ic; tic drill-spindl- e, drill-spindl- e, drill-spindl- e; drill-spind- drill-spindl- drill-spindl- e; drill-spindl- e, ut in?-n- er drill-spind- le drill-spind- le. slits in cutting a plurality and should sists the slits being at an anmultaneously, be arrested and prosecuted as such. gle one to the other, which consists In a level with the floor cutting one slit onone at an angle theremine and The Associated Press discovered that of the cut simultaneously, to, both cuts a Chicago man named Corey is going to which consistsbeing in cutting a horizontal siorganize 120,000 commercial travelers slit in the coal or like substance, incutting another slit into anti-silvclubs, he claiming that multaneously clined at an angle to said horizontal 97 per cent of these men are opposed to slit, allowing both slits to practically free coinage. Well informed traveling intersect each other and removing the mamen in this city state that the dispatch core left between them; in a mining chine for undercutting coal or the like, is a fake, having its origin in the desire the combination with a suitable frame or of the Associated Press to boost the support, suitable driving mechanism for driving two sets of cutters arranged gold standard cause; that there are not to cut at an angle one to the other, 100,000 commercial travelers In the and feeding mechanism by which said United States and that neither Corey cutters may be fed into the coal; a nor anyone else knows how they stand suitable driving mechanism giving motion, two sets of chanon the silver question. Corey only reciprocating tools neling placed at an angle one to speaks for himself and probably two or the other, and two sets of feeding three hundred members of a McKinley mechanisms. club. This some man four years ago The Four mine at Leadville has attempted to organize the commercial resumedBigoperations at the same wages travelers into Harrison clubs and was paid before the strike was inaugurated, unable to secure a thousand members. $3 per day. This was one of the properties that engaged in a sympathetic shut-dowand the foolish course purDead wood has a new smelter of sued by the manager cost him his offitons capacity. cial head. or ordinary flim-flamm- er er n, |