Show recent developments at yellow pine property while the yellow pine mining alining company at goodsprings Good springs nevada eight miles from jean on the salt lake route is the heaviest shipper of zinc carbonate ore in the united states it is also one of the largest silver lead producers in the state of nevada the value of the latter product being almost twice as much as the zinc shipments although zinc concentrates comprise 80 per cent of the shipments of the yellow pine the advantages of this wonderful property have been brought to the front more forcibly within the past year through the entire rebuilding of the companas comp anys mill making it the best of its kind in the state and the only plant in the united states raising the value of its zinc concentrates by cal cluing the opening up of large ore bodies in the mine the rebuilding of the mining plant and the pioneering work carried on in the volatilization of ores experiments already carried out on a large scale show a recovery of better than 96 per cent of the silver and 92 per cent of the lead from the zinc concentrates A cottrell precipitation plant is being constructed which will allow the work to be carried out on a commercial BY PERCY M CROPPER scale with no interference with the work of calci ning FA V 4 4 j ie t 4 7 Good showing concentrator concentrate bins Calci ning general view of plant at goodsprings springs plant loading bins and machine shops railroad in middle foreground 11 L iz mill all storage bin for calcine feed and stack to 23 to one who has watched the growth of this pr producer through the various stages of its development when in two years it was able to pay in dividends the marked improvement of the past year is the greatest advance the property has ever made the capacity of the mill has been greatly enlarged the tonnage in sight ha has s been trebled and earnings of the company as shown by the last quarterly report are over nervy ope operator made the mine with a dividend record of and making makin ta regular quarterly payments to its stockholders iders for y years ears the property ranks as the steadiest producer in the state although the mine was discovered about fit teen years ago it was not until 1911 that it began to show its worth in 1911 the writer first visited the property at which was developing with a time the company single compartment incline shaft down a few hundred feet but which showed considerable sid erable ore of a complex character at that time a small ancient capper copper lei lea mill just above the town of goodsprings Good springs was being changed to a concentrating plant to handle the ore and a narrow gauge railroad was being built from jean a distance of eight miles to goodsprings Good springs and from goodsprings Good springs to the yellow pine mine four miles west remarkable as it may seem the money that was spent at that time was practically the only capital invested in the property since then it if has made its own way in the early days of the property J F J mine equipment dump and loading bins on 01 railroad under dump kent as president of the corporation carried the company through many a trying period it was due to his earnest conviction of the future that the struggling tion was brought to the point of production and today he is still president of the company following the death of fred A hale jr in 1918 who had successfully managed tri property for a number of years the company secured the services of morris II orris P kirk an experienced mining engineer ot of salt lake to take charge as general manager prior to this mr ir kirk had beer beeb engal engaged ed in mill construction and mine development and operations in the south and throughout the western states for a number of years new manager applies new methods when the shaft house was destroyed by fire in the spring of 1919 advantage was taken of the opportunity to rebuild the mill which in many respects is unique there are no tailings from the plant everything is shipped through the calci ning of the zinc concentrates driving off the moisture and carbon dioxide the value of the material is increased approximately 5 a ton at accost a cost that has already been lowered to a ton but which mr kirk believes will shortly be as low as 1 a ton I 1 I 1 at the invitation of ar mr kirk the united states bureau of mines through thomas H varley superintendent in charge of the salt lake experimental station at the university of utah has for the past eight months ajen been conducting volatilization experiments peri ments on the yellow pine zinc concentrates by using salt as a agent and heating the material sufficiently to drive off the silver and lead contained in the zinc concentrates as chlorides and precipitating the same in cottrell precipitators which are used in all the large smelting smelling sm elting plants throughout the world these tests were first made in a small way and later checked in the complete volatilization plant and the cottrell at the salt lake station these tests have shown a recovery as high as per cent of the silver and per cent of the lead contained in the calcines the silver at present in the calcines is not only an economic but also a commercial loss the western precipitation Corn company pany ot of los angeles has loaned the yellow pine I 1 mining g company a complete cottrell plant and the same is now being installed under the direction of the united states bureau of 11 mines ines and when completed tests on a commercial scale will be made the success of this process not only T ireana hundreds of thousands of dollars to the stockholders of the yellow pine 11 mining ining Coni company pany but is a tremendous step forward in zinc metallurgy with a consequent saving of millions of dollars contained in the zinc ores produced in the united states each year but which at present is being completely lost milling operations described in brief the operations at the mill are as follows the ore which is crushed to linch l inch at the mine is hauled in 7 ton side dump ing cars and dumped into the storage bin bill bioni aiom this bin bill it is elevated by a bucket elevator to the top of the mill and passed through a 4 inch which makes three sizes of products the first 1 of an inch and finer going through a six spigot classifier the second a esth th of an inch size going to a three compartment hartz jig the third or oversize going to an impact screen of a quarter inch opening tile the material passing through this screen goes gocs to a three compartment hartz jig and the oversize to the rolls for further crushing cn account of the ore being so soft and sliming so easily every endeavor is 1111 made ade to do as little crushing as possible the classifier makes six sand products and a slime or overflow the former going to six deister sand tables and the overflow to cone tanks for watering de while the pulp from these goes to two universal tables and two doisher slime tables the hartz jigs make three products a clean silver lead concentrate in the first two compartments a middling in the third compartment and a tailing which is really the zinc concentrate the tables make similar products a lead silver a zinc concentrate and a middling the latter from both the tables and the jigs is screened the minus 16 mesh going to a classifier and thence to the tables and the oversize to the fine rolls for further crushing and then back into the mill circuit the lead silver concentrates and the zinc concentrates flow by gravity to two drag dewater ers the lead drag delivering its product direct to a storage bin the zinc concentrate drag carries the material to a 30 degree incline belt conveyor which carries it to a main inabin storage bin above the cal bining plant the overflow from the lead drag going to settling tanks to recover the fine slime lead contained the zinc drag overflow which carries quite a percentage of very fine slime goes to large slime ponds where it is sun dried and shipped to the zinc smelt ers the company is considering the installation of a dorr thickener and a filter to treat this product which when installed will deliver a zinc slime product to the calci ning storage bin for treatment thereby increasing the value the same as the zinc concentrates Calci ning enriches zinc concentrates from the storage bin the zinc concentrates which contain about 14 per cent moisture are fed on a jeffrey jett rey pan conveyor traveling eight feet a minute to a 5 W new engine house and hoisting works at mine foot vulcan rotary kiln for calci ning not only drys out the moisture contained contains but also drives off the carbon dioxide in the tn concentrates which amounts to is 18 per cent cen b by y weight this is done by heating the concentrates to degrees centigrade using crude oil for fuel under three pounds pou s pressure from the the ore is con COD keyed by screw conveyors to an elevator and thence direct to 1 storage bins bills and the railroad cars the zinc concentrates as they enter the average about 34 per cent zinc and after calci ning average about 42 per cent zinc and show a total weight reduction of some 32 per cent when althen the reconstruction I 1 of the mill was undertaken al J cloonen of salt lake who was concentrator foreman in the magna alagna mill of the utah copper company was placed in charge of the mill construction work of the yellow pine as mill superintendent mine operation and equipment at the mine an average of forty men inen per shift are employed and four machine drills are used in development work the output averages around 2000 tons a month on oil account of the fire destroying the shaft buildings in march 1919 mine operations were discontinued during 11 march arch april may alay and june and the surface plant was completely rebuilt and equipped it is now modern in every respect and one of the most up to date plants in the state power at the plant is furnished by fair banks morse semi diesel engines which drive a generator for lighting and power used in the mine also an ingersoll rand compressor and a fulton hoist the plant also contains a direct driven chicago pneumatic unit for additional adit ional air when nee eded the ore is automatically automatically cally dumped from the main skip to a grizzly the oversize going to a storage bin under which are sa sorting arting tables where the waste rock is removed and then to a blake crusher where it is reduced to linch l inch size A rather ingenious method has been employed at the bin where by the shifting of steel doors material is sent ii into I 1 to four ur pockets these pockets are for high grade zinc ore high grade lead concentrating concentrates ore and waste from this bin bill waste is trani crammed med to the dump mp and the e ore to bins tor for loading on oil the railroad Fail road cars the mine plant also includes a blacksmith shop machine shop storage room engineering office and timber fra framing braining ining yard first rated as a copper mine strange grange as it may seem the yellow pine line was first mane and opened up as a copper mine ironi from the old bybee of discovery two cars was copper copper ore were shipped the first shaft a on single compartment ament that went down a li right agry gry looking outcrop rop but it went to the ore the orahn if about shaft was an ail incline lle 40 degrees and had i i slightly y arih north of west a depth of feet As the shaft sh farther depth took it deop away y from the ore bodies necessitated 5 ille which alch sinking king of a now new shaft been was started start ed in 1913 this shaft has slink at an all angle of 35 degrees agrees in a direction teet feet in lais 1915 reaching g a depth of anav tah has two prents compartments a ind and a hoisting compartment the skip has a hoisting capacity of twenty tons an hour i there are large ore pockets located on oil the and levels in 1912 it was found that a combined caving and shrinking system of was impractical and the use of square sets was found more satisfactory for the miner the yellow pine mine is perhaps the cleanest in the west to work ni in free from water and dust cool and well ventilated ore and country rock breaks easily and the first class equipment employed makes employment particularly desirable si about the mine quite a town has sprung up tip with good houses good water and electric lighting throughout there is also a school house for the children of this little village recent developments insure future the mine has responded to development recently in a way that promises its continuation as a big shipper of lead silver and the largest producer of zinc carbonates in the entire united states for some years to come schoolhouse arno among ng joshua trees at yellow pine mine although the shaft at the mine only extends to the goo level a whize to the 1000 shows stringers of ore from one to four feet in ill width which give promise of making into a large ore body and extending to much greater depth the shaft extending to the southwest which at that time was believed to be towards the best mineralized part of the ground opened up great ore bodies on the and levels at the close of 1918 it was believed that there was less than a years sd supply of ore in sight character of the ore the ore which is a lead silver zinc carbonate occurs as a replacement deposit in ill limestone and has been found for a distance of 1400 feet running southwest and northeast through the companas comp anys ground the ore is not continuous but is cut by numer ous step faults with a total throw of some SOO feet to the east many of these faults are less than the width of the ore body so that the hanging wall is found where the foot wall would be expected these faults also carry considerable ore the ore bodies rake to the northwest bul bulging gling out and narrowing down but those that have recently been opened are shown to be of large size and continuity the formation throughout has a dip of about 37 degrees to the northwest to the northwest of the ore body is an intrusive porphyry sill of varying width under which is a sandstone about twenty feet thick and then a bed of limestone about feet thick which has carried all the ore thus far discovered under the limestone there is a bed of calcareous shale some ten feet thick the largest ore bodies that have ever been found in the mine are being developed in the northwestern section of the ground present one ore body is being opened up which has a length of over feet along the strike averaging fifty feet in thickness and extends sixty feet above the level to below the level and is still going down C rn cn n the level three drifts are being run in full faces of high grade ore which will undoubtedly in make into large ore bodies the ore from the yellow pine is decidedly uniform As mined it averages 32 per ceat zinc 12 per cent lead and 10 ounces in silver fair sailing ahead costs reduced in 1919 the little remodeled copper mill previously spoken of was still in operation but savings were growing less labor and supply costs ir creasing metal prices decreasing and nd ore developments were also somewhat behind with the fire at the shaft it was a hard problem that the officials of the company faced there was plenty of reason for hes lesat utincy nicy in going ahead with new work it was only after absolute demonstrations strat st rations foris of what could be done that they allowed the management to begin reconstruction st As each new obstacle has been over come progress has rapidly increased until costs have been greatly lowered from previous years an important feature of the last quarterly report is the fact that the per ton costs were reduced to 1163 as corn pared with 1235 in 1917 which was the nearest full year of operations this was done in spite of a 25 per cent increase in labor costs and a 60 per cent advance in materials over the year 1917 the officers of the company are J F kent president C W kent vice president S E yount |