Show t BUYING AND SELLING OF ORES ft tile the buying and selling of ores and metallurgical products is the title litle of technical wal paper 83 just issued by the bureau of 1 y 0 f lines charles H fulton the author ays V t the e buying and selling of ores and 01 metallurgical products is a great and highly Por tant business in the united states 10 one that teat concerns not only the miner nd iid the metallurgist but the industrial I 1 world orld in general in this paper the attempt I 1 I 1 deade to outline clearly its underlying ici pies the subject matter being based 1 1 personal onal experience and investigation the author has endeavored to present the material impartially and for that reason many of the statements and figures regarding metallurgical practice should be taken as illustrative rather than as applying exactly to average operating conditions moreover the statements as to metal prices and trade methods are to he be considered as applying to normal business not to special conditions that have developed as a result of the war in europe As regards the style technical words and phrases have been avoided as much as possible in order to make the paper easily understood by anyone who might be interested in estimating the value of an ore or an intermediate metallurgical product other than a refined metal the basis used is the price of the refined metal at some principle market center such as new york at the time the valuation is made the average price of all copper for 1913 was cents per pound and for electrolytic copper cents per pound the prices for other metals for the year 1914 were as follows lead cents per pound spelter cents per pound silver cents per troy ounce gold has the standard value established by law of 2067 per troy ounce if the metal contents in pounds for the base metals and in troy ounces for the precious metals per avoirdupois ton be multiplied by the prevailing price 0 oc L the refined metals the sum of the products will be the gross value of the ore there is however a wide difference between the gross and the net value of a ton of ore from the gross value must be deducted first the total cost of mining the ore and then the total cost of charge for treatment which includes some or all of the following items freight to treatment plant milling or smelting smelling sm elting charge charge to compensate for losses of metal in treatment charge for penalties imposed on undesirable constituents in the ore charge for freight to refining center charge for refining the metal charge to cover the selling costs of the refined metal which of these charges are imposed and what the amount of each charge is depend on the ore the method of treatment and the number of firms that handle the ore and metals in the process from ore to refined metal the types of compa companies iii es that handle ores and metallurgical products may be classified as follows 1 mining and smelting smelling sm elting companies or mining and milling companies which control all the operations from the mining of and selling of the production the the ore to finished metal companies which mine and 2 mining sell belfore ore on certain schedules to smelter or milling companies 3 custom smelter sm elters sp or mills which purchase operate refineries and ores and also produce refined metals or sell intermediate metallurgical products to refineries concerns of type 3 may control mines that furnish a part of their ore supply 4 refining Refi ining companies which purchase metallurgical products such as matte and crude metals and some ores and produce refined metals 5 selling agencies which place the refined metals on the market it is apparent that an ore or the products derived from it may go through many hands before the finished metal reaches the market and that metallurgical business may be complex in this report the essentials of the commercial side of metallurgical work are discussed in some detail copies of this technical paper may be obtained free of charge by applying to the director of the bureau of mines washington D C |