It's our local scene here in West Cornwall - interest in geology, mining and minerals. All are joint endeavours Projects have been going from strength to strength.
---------------------------- Congratulations.
This may be of interest, it's an early description of manual mining methods that didn't change much until mechanical power became available. The translator was a mining engineer before becoming US President.
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On assaying techniques: "Those familiar with the art will be astonished at the small progress made since his time, for in his pages appear most of the reagents and most of the critical operations in the dry analyses of gold, silver, lead, copper, tin, bismuth, quicksilver, and iron of to-day."
Knowing Latin, German and Chemistry helps a little but isn't essential. The modern dry assaying texts I suggested along with blowpipe analysis are more useful and easier to follow.
I've made similar wooden machinery with a water wheel driving peg and lantern wheel gears. That made me appreciate modern machine tools. It was a symbolic protest art project that appeared to meter bleach into the smelly stream that ran across the college campus. It ran under and offended the biology building where they investigated the cause and discovered algal eutrophication from fertilizer runoff from the school's agricultural field.
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J
Jim Wilkins
I've been asked if the rod-mill is portable - ie. can it be slung in a car and taken to where there's some minerals actions? That is how far it's gone. The answer is yes just about - but nowhere near as much as I'd like it to be portable.
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That's typical of development; the first prototype is arranged to be easy to build and modify, when it works it prompts requests for repackaging, and perhaps to make it look like other commercial products. The Segway went through around a dozen revisions before its release. Your welding skill gives you a jump ahead on this.
I learned to work sheet metal and bought some basic equipment so I could make products presentable. It helps to design heavy equipment as portable modules that automatically align when reassembled, perhaps with dowel pins. If you use two opposed screws to align something a locknut on one is a reminder to loosen only the other for disassembly.
A guide to drill and tap straight is very useful when you add fasteners to connect the modules. It can be as simple as a block with drill-sized holes, near the edge if you frame with angle iron. I prefer to drill one side and tap the other so only one side needs wrench clearance. I turn the bolt end pointed and a short section of the thread to root diameter to make assembling heavy sawmill and gantry components easier.
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David Billington
Richard,
Your mill looks quite portable as is. Many times I've taken my folding engine crane in the car to pick heavy items up or to load them into the estate car and then loaded the crane along side so it could be used to remove the item later. I've moved various engines, welders, a floor standing bandsaw.
J
Jim Wilkins
I added a crane like this to my pickup truck, with a home made mast extension for taller loads such as appliances, my ~2 stone TIG/stick welder, my milling machine and surface grinder and a friend's Atlas lathe purchase.
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David Billington
That looks quite handy and more headroom, 93 million miles, than my estate car but I don't think I need a pick-up that bad, not yet at least.
A question for you regarding US spelling of words such as fiber and fibre, I was looking through a 1926 copy of the William Dixon catalogue and the word is exclusively spelt 'fibre' where it seems the modern US spelling is 'fiber' , any idea when and why the change.
A link here
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, I just happened to be looking for paper mallets, sometimes called fibre mallets which are on page 297.
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Jim Wilkins
That looks quite handy and more headroom, 93 million miles, than my estate car but I don't think I need a pick-up that bad, not yet at least.
A question for you regarding US spelling of words such as fiber and fibre, I was looking through a 1926 copy of the William Dixon catalogue and the word is exclusively spelt 'fibre' where it seems the modern US spelling is 'fiber' , any idea when and why the change.
A link here
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I just happened to be looking for paper mallets, sometimes called fibre mallets which are on page 297.
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"re" is French, "er" is Latin (and German). Samuel Johnson vs Noah Webster. We learned about Johnson and Boswell in grade school.
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sound almost identical to us though I don't think they try to.
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who visited London after our Revolution commented on the change in pronunciation, which I have read was the East Midlands of the newly rich mill owners who were gaining status over the old nobility.
I attended a lecture by Dylan Thomas' daughter and had no trouble understanding her. IIRC the way their village is pronounced is just Lanwee, like Cholmondeley = Chumly.
Wilkins is supposedly Welsh (Cymreig). "Welsch" is German for a French-speaking foreigner, like the exiled Celts who joined the Normans.
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"In Swiss German, French-speaking Switzerland is known as Welschland ..."
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"Indeed, because of the status of RP as the default accent in teaching English as a foreign language, these days you’re much more likely to hear it spoken in Moscow or Buenos Aires than in London!" I hear it from educated Indians, along with a touch of their local tongue. I can't complain, RP is the standard, we have the foreign accent. French is the same, the best pronunciation is in Africa.
Keltic/celtic is another example of divergence influenced by fashion. K.. is Greek and German, C.. is later Latin and French. Kaiser is the original pronunciation of Caesar, before it became see.. and then ch... Even Scotland uses both K and C.
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Jim Wilkins
That looks quite handy and more headroom, 93 million miles, than my estate car but I don't think I need a pick-up that bad, not yet at least.
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They are essential for suburban and especially rural American males, urban males have no place to park them.
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Women get the SUVs and the tasks of hauling groceries and kids around.
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Richard Smith
For what it's worth... Yesterday we (this local "consortium") managed to extract metallic lead. So we've gone all the way from "rocks" in the landscape to metal in the hand.
Pasting-in a technical note:
Smelting of galena achieved by cupelling. Process steps:
collect ore
break-up with lump-hammer
crush in a "laboratory-sized" jaw-crusher
rod-mill grind to a "sand" in my rod-mill
separate galena (with siderite) on a shaking-table
pan-out and discard siderite, the ivory-white iron mineral
cupel in a gas-fired furnace Remarkably for this very crude first attempt, we recovered about 66% of the lead. ["model" basis of calculation : concentrate is 100% galena (PbS); therefore 87% of mass would be lead; obtained lead with 57% off mass of concentrate - therefore the 66% calculated recovery of lead] Impurities in the concentrate would mean our actual recovery of lead is better than the "model" calculation.
I am very happy with having achieved this first breakthrough. The entire landscape of aspirations seems more achievable.
Best wishes, Rich Smith
J
Jim Wilkins
For what it's worth... Yesterday we (this local "consortium") managed to extract metallic lead. So we've gone all the way from "rocks" in the landscape to metal in the hand.
Pasting-in a technical note:
Smelting of galena achieved by cupelling. Process steps:
collect ore
break-up with lump-hammer
crush in a "laboratory-sized" jaw-crusher
rod-mill grind to a "sand" in my rod-mill
separate galena (with siderite) on a shaking-table
pan-out and discard siderite, the ivory-white iron mineral
cupel in a gas-fired furnace Remarkably for this very crude first attempt, we recovered about 66% of the lead. ["model" basis of calculation : concentrate is 100% galena (PbS); therefore 87% of mass would be lead; obtained lead with 57% off mass of concentrate - therefore the 66% calculated recovery of lead] Impurities in the concentrate would mean our actual recovery of lead is better than the "model" calculation.
I am very happy with having achieved this first breakthrough. The entire landscape of aspirations seems more achievable.
Best wishes, Rich Smith
----------------------------------- How did you/they determine the amount of lead?
In first year chemistry we learned qualitative but not quantitative analysis. Some of the most useful chemicals for analysis are now restricted as hazardous.
R
Richard Smith
Put it on a weighing scale.
57grammes From 100g of the gelana concentrate.
It looked like lead and had a lot of density. No assay of the metal yet.
J
Jim Wilkins
Put it on a weighing scale.
57grammes From 100g of the gelana concentrate.
It looked like lead and had a lot of density. No assay of the metal yet.
-------------------------------- The lead may contain other similar metals such as tin, bismuth and antimony, cupellation should have left any silver as an undissolved bead. What was the cupel made from?
I suppose for a show-and-tell museum display the more tedious aspects of traditional chemical analysis would be wasted, except for the few like me who annoy the presenter with questions they can't answer.
Galena was the Crystal in early radios. It forms a Schottky barrier diode where the metal whisker contacts it.
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Similar Germanium contact diodes with metal spring ribbons were used through the 1950's and later. Early US rocket launch failures eventually were traced to the ribbon vibrating out of contact, the noise level in the rocket is around 160 dB. Google didn’t find much on it, I learned in person from a rocket scientist, and also about the moon landing "computer failure" false alarm.
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Richard Smith
Just shows the 57g lump of lead...
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"First metal extracted from gathered ore !"
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Richard Smith
Cupel material - didn't ask. We were under pressure of time.
Conditions and flux recipe created to extract the lead. Presumably any silver is alloyed into the lead?
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Jim Wilkins
Just shows the 57g lump of lead...
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"First metal extracted from gathered ore !"
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Congratulations, you've found the key to start civilization.
I wonder if the first to discover that had any idea of the power they had unlocked, or just imagined shiny ornaments.
R
Richard Smith
:-)
Why in-general we do these things - visit the roots and thence go forward to knoweldgeably be at the current art.
J
Jim Wilkins
An interest I share, as you may have noticed.
R
Richard Smith
Yes :-)
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