Gold tooling

“ Consequently they had bought liberally of all sorts of idiotic patent contraptions. India rubber played a prominent part. And the deck was cumbered with at least forty sorts of machines 23 for separating gold from the soil: some of them to use water, some muscular labour, and one tremendous affair with wings was supposed to fan away everything but the gold. Differing in everything else, they were alike in one thing: they had all been devised by men who had never seen any but manufactured gold. I may add that I never saw a machine of the kind actually at work in the diggings. ”

“ The variety of purposes to which iron is thus capable of being applied, renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals combined. Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable state; and at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a sword ”

“ The extraction of gold from the soil is an industry so old that its first introduction is lost in the mist of ages. As before stated, gold is one of the most widely disseminated of the metals, and man, so soon as he had risen from the lowest forms of savagery, began to be attracted by the kingly metal, which he found to be easily fashioned into articles of ornament and use, and to be practically non-corrodable. ”

“ If you have "struck it rich" you will have the pleasure of seeing your primitive windlass grow to a "whip," a "whim," and eventually to a big powerful engine, with its huge drum and Eiffel tower-like "poppet heads," or "derrick," with their great spindle pulley wheels revolving at dizzy speed high in air.
"How shall I know if I have payable gold so as to save time and trouble in sinking?" says the novice. Truly it is a most important part of the prospector's art, whether he be searching for alluvial or reef gold, stream or lode tin, copper, or other valuable metal. ”

“ Men of all classes, capable of wielding a pick or a spade, and many to whom such instruments had been previously unknown, were seen abandoning their farms, their shops, or their counting-houses, to swell the throng which rushed forth from every quarter to “prospect” for gold in the gullies and creeks whose appearance or geological formation promised a yield of the precious metal. ”

“ The application of machinery to the economical production of certain classes of jewelry, not necessarily imitations, but as much “real gold” work, to use a trade phrase, as the best hand-made, has been on the increase for many years. Nearly every kind of gold chain now made is manufactured by machinery, and nothing like the beauty of design or perfection of workmanship could be obtained by hand at, probably, any cost. The question therefore in relation to chains is not the mode of manufacture, but the quality of the metal. ”

“ In regard to bringing machines to California for the purpose of washing gold, I must caution the miner to be careful and judicious in their selection. Some of the more recent inventions are valuable, especially the “Quicksilver Gold Separator,” which is constructed to operate with quicksilver in such manner as to save the fine particles of gold which in the ordinary cradles or rockers are lost. The only object of a machine of any kind is to break up and keep in motion a larger quantity of earth than a pan would hold, and at the same time prevent the gold from being lost. ”

“ Following the gold trail into the gulches and ravines of the Snowy ridge, some of them were able to fix their trained eyes on quartz veins such as they had seen at home, and, scattered through the solid rock, to detect sparkling grains of gold which might long have escaped less practised observers. And through the same men, skilled in the fashion and use of the machinery found best and simplest for crushing and separating the gold, the necessary apparatus was speedily obtained and set to work to prove the richness of the new deposits. ”

“ There is no system, and the treatment of ores is of necessity handed over to the tender mercies of men who have not even an idea of what an intricate science metallurgy has become in older countries. During many years of practical experience I have never known a single instance where a lode, on being worked, gave a return according to assay, and I have never known any mine where some of the precious metals could not be found in the tailings or slag. ”

“ He also knew by hearsay the western route, viâ Apollonian Béin.
c. Native Modes of Working Gold.
In all places, and at all times, gold, probably the metal first used by man, has been worked in the same way. This is a fair evidence of that instinctive faculty which produces a general resemblance of rude stone-implements from England to Australia. There are six methods for 'getting' the precious metal—surfacing or washing; shallow-sinking; sluicing, or removing the earth through natural and artificial channels; deep sinking; tunnelling, and quartz-mining. ”

“ As I have before said, very little gold has been found in the vicinity of the mill,—and the gold-diggers there, at that time, were rewarded by not more than five dollars per day.
Most of them had brought with them some one of the many newfangled machines that were manufactured in the United States, after the reports of the gold discovery reached there, like the razors of Pindar, “to sell.” ”

“ Native gold is malleable, will flatten out under the hammer, and a steel knife will cut it with ease. It almost invariably contains silver, sometimes to the extent of one-fifth. A little practice will enable the prospector to recognize it, for there is but one king metal. Much gold is derived from copper and iron pyrites, and silver and lead ores are a very large source of supply.
Gold is found in gravel of every variety, from finest pipe-clay to boulders weighing tons. ”

“ Solomon says “there is no new thing under the sun”; certainly there is much that is not absolutely new in appliances for gold extraction. I lately learned that the principle of one of our newest concentrating machines, the Frue vanner, was known in India and the East centuries ago; and we have it on good authority—that of Pliny—that gold saving by amalgamation with [4] mercury was practised before the Christian era. It will not be surprising then if, ere long, some one claims to have invented the Korean Mill, with improvements. ”

“ When the machine gets too full of stones to be worked easily, the man whose business it is to attend to them throws them out with his shovel, looking carefully among them as he does so for any pieces of gold which may have been too large to pass through the holes of the riddle. I am sorry to say that he generally loses his labor. At night they pan out the gold which has been collected in the riffle-box during the day. Many of the miners decline washing the top dirt at all, but try to reach as quickly as possible the bed-rock, where are found the richest deposits of gold. ”

“ This appliance, working somewhat slowly, swings on rockers from side to side, and is usually employed in mills where, owing to the complexity of the ore, difficulties have been met with in amalgamating the gold. Riffles are provided and even very fine gold is sometimes effectively recovered by their aid.
The Frue vanner will, as a rule, act well when the pulp is sufficiently fine. It is really a adaptation of an old and simple apparatus used in China and India for washing gold dust from the sands of rivers. ”

“ Where water could not be obtained the ore and soil were pulverised and dried, and then thrown against the wind or a blast of air, and the heavier gold, falling before the lighter dust, was caught on hides or blankets. For [Pg 236] the crushing of the quartz in which gold was found, innumerable inventions in stamp mills, rollers, crushers, abraders, pulverisers and amalgamators have been invented; and so with roasters, and furnaces, and crucibles to melt the precious metal, separate the remaining impurities and convert it to use. ”

“ In gilding a plain surface, hammer well down with a firm touch and a good cotton wool pad before skewing off, and then skew with a soft new stencil tool, using a circular motion, and polish with a soft piece of cotton wool. Laying gold upon ordinary oil or Japan gold size is sometimes done by a process of transferring. This process is economical and useful for outside work, or for etched and partial gilt work. To accomplish the process, the gold must be what is known as transfer gold, gold leaf which has been put upon tissue paper. ”

“ It not being possible to point out where the ancient river beds lie, smothered as they are by hundreds of feet of overlying drift, lava, and other later deposits, the only feasible plan is a series of boring with the diamond drill.
When gold has been discovered the finder must act with the greatest prudence, for even gold may be bought too dear. The surest test is a mill run, that is passing 10 to 50 tons through all the operations of crushing, milling, roasting, amalgamating, etc., and so ascertaining what returns are likely to be obtainable when the deposit is worked on a commercial scale. ”

“ Care and attention are required to catch the fine gold. A disregard of the foregoing directions results in great loss, more particularly in the fine gold. Mechanical skill is required to properly design and construct a dredge, and the care of a competent mechanic is necessary to see that the machine is kept in order and economically operated. The saving of the gold, however, is what makes dredging operations a commercial success. A man skilled in these matters should be in charge of running operations. ”

“ The gold-beater takes a large, heavy hammer with an iron head, and pounds the little parcel in front of him with all his strength. He continues his hammering until the bits of gold have been considerably flattened out. He next takes the thin gold sheets and puts them between finer pieces of white Chinese paper, and then continues his pounding until the sheets have become sufficiently attenuated to be used for the gilding of images and ornaments. Gold-leaf is sold in sheets about three inches square at the rate of fifteen to eighteen shillings per thousand sheets. ”

“ But be careful no engine oil or grease mingles with the water, as grease on the copper tables will absolutely prevent amalgamation.
The first point, then, is to effectively crush the gangue, the degree of fineness being regulated by the fineness of the gold itself. This being done, then comes the question of saving the gold. If the quartz be clean, and the gold unmixed with base metal, the difficulty is small. All that is required is to ensure that each particle of gold shall be taken up by the mercury. The main object is to arrest the gold at the earliest possible stage ”

“ It is destined to effect great changes in the process of washing gold in this country, and particularly when the miner that now works independently and alone will find his labor very hard and not paying him sufficiently, since this machine being worked with mercury, saves the most minute particles of gold that escape the eye, and thus gives in aggregate a greater result than can be sometimes obtained by washing large pieces alone. ”

“ As a matter of fact, we were both in the dead-water of reaction from hard, long-continued labour, and we could not bring ourselves to face with any enthusiasm the resuming of gold washing. Revulsion shook us at the mere thought of getting down in a hot, glaring ravine and moving heavy earth and rocks. Yet we had not made a fortune, nor much of a beginning at one, and neither of us was what is known as a quitter. We realized perfectly that we would go on gold mining.
“What we need is a recess,” Johnny ended, “and I move we take it. ”

“ The operations described hitherto have been the disintegration of the gold-bearing material and the extraction therefrom of the coarser free gold. But it must be understood that most auriferous lode stuff contains a proportion of sulphides of various metals, wherein a part of the gold, usually in a very finely divided state, is enclosed, and on this gold the mercury has no influence. Also many lodes contain hard heavy ferric ores, such as titanic iron, tungstate of iron, and hematite, in which gold is held. ”

“ After the whole surface is carefully skewed, or gone over with the brush which removes the ragged edges and still further presses the gold into the ornaments, the frame is well dusted with another soft brush, and then sized with clear size, after which the work is complete.
Supposing however that any part of the frame is to be of burnished gilt, the clear cole and the oil gold size must not be suffered to touch that portion,—burnish gold size, a substance made of grease, clay, black lead, red chalk, and bullock’s blood, is used instead of the oil gold size. ”

“ The deposits of gold at the south pole were richer than the wildest reports had represented them. The shipments of the precious metal to America and Europe soon became enormous—so enormous that the metal was no longer precious. The price of gold dropped like a falling stone, with accelerated velocity, and within a year every money centre in the world had been swept by a panic. Gold was more common than iron. ”

“ Supposing the supply of the precious metals at present afforded by the mines to fail entirely the world over, there can be little doubt that all the plate now in existence would be gradually converted into money, and gold and silver would soon cease to be employed in the ornamental arts. ”