Fair'nuff, Winer...let's DO IT: Winer sez: 1) Your claim seems to be that screening for larger (pencil point) grains has a direct effect on the dissolution of the smaller (salt sized) grains. Can you unpack this a bit?
O/49r RESPONSE: Sure! It is easier/quicker for cyanide which works from outside in, i.e., eating away in a dissolving process, to digest -30mesh specs into microscope particulate than -12mesh nuggets.
Winer sez: There seems to be an assertion that the accuracy of this process becomes murky because there are "thousands of assays needing to be done at the same time." As presented, this is heresay. Can you substantiate this? I have to discount this statement at this point of the appraisal. It is, without facts to support it, quite meaningless.
O/49r RESPONSE: Well, I could tell you it is fact because I've said so. I could even remind you that 40,000 assays at the same lab over a period of 3 years as quoted by BXM P/R...well you can do the math...that is 13,300 per year, 1,111 per month, in this Indo lab, from Just Bre-X.
Due to the time limitations of Cyanide leaching of 750 grams, gravity vs vacuum filtering of zinced gold particulate, and firing not once but 3x the resultant goldshot per 750gram sample, well, you have thousands of samples in a busy lab that has more than one customer!
So, like I said, you can believe it because of my experience and public press release information re: numbers.
Winer sez: Making this kind of relationship/connection between what one company and another does in practice, without factual information to back it up, contributes to the investor mindset that sells FCX primarily because BRE-X's results are called into question. Not a very intelligent way to set up a comparative point.
O/49r RESPONSE: I guess intelligence like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the possessor of the intelligence. I've already covered in the prior response, that FCX's use of the same Indo lab is a matter of public record via press releases over the last wk!
Winer sez: What if some lab employee mislabelled which batch pencil point "nuggets" go with the dissolved and fired results? Now, you've got an idea of the difficulty of cyanide leaching modus operandae."
This is an assertion of either intentional unintentional incompetence. Again, this is surmised, not backed up. Have you any real evidence, or is it just an intelligent observation on your part? Thus far you have not said anything authoritative about the practices of the lab/lab procedures that you are investigating here.
O/49r RESPONSE: You are correct, it is an INTELLIGENT OBSERVATION from many years of doing this. We are talking resultant specs of goldshot and assayed goldspecs from the fired goldshot originals sitting around in baggies/lab glass, pieces of Post-It-Notes, WHATEVER
in your typical CROWDED LAB...and all sorts of comings and goings, by various overworked lab personnel stepping on each other. In otherwords, the finest labs are some of the world's biggest bottlenecks in this biz. THAT IS FACT!!!!
Winer sez: Assaying & refining is an artform and constantly in need of tweaking, due to the in situ material composition as well as the nugget effect!
Well, you seemed to have shown us that you believe this to be true. But that was evident from the start. Perhaps you could expand on the relationship between assaying and refining as an artform and the seemingly unavoidable incompetence that you attribute to this Indo lab. Are these lab people artists, near artists, or non-artists? How would you imagine they go about tweaking? What kind of tweaking. Do you tweak like they tweak?
O/49r RESPONSE: News Flash: Humans make mistakes. Tired Humans make more mistakes. Mistakes aren't intentional errors. Temperature fluctuates, phone rings, cyanide has to be oxidated to max its dissolving power and someone may forget to go check that and adjust the oxidant drip (yes, in my lab it's like an IV drip, bottle and all...I use the very same set-up.)
Without having ever laid eyes on these Indo lab individuals, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, they are artists, with the normal mixture of incompetents thrown in for statistical averages. Always one know it all dolt in the bunch, usually the guy/gal that is in charge of receiving and logging the incoming material in my experience!
Do we all tweak alike? No, not necessarily, but we all tweak with the same "flux recipe ingredients." For example...Did the lab conduct w/each sample a check assay of EACH FLUX INGREDIENT TO MAKE SURE THERE WASN'T ALREADY PARTICULATE GOLD IN EACH FLUX INGREDIENT.
Get ready to hoot and holler on this one, but I Swear to God, this is a true statement: I have assayed baking flour from the grocery store shelf and found particulate gold in my cupel when it was all over!
If the check assays of all FLUX INGREDIENTS USED AT THE SAME TIME AS THE CYANIDED PARTICULATE W/FLUX IN A NEIGHBORING CRUCIBLE IN THE FURNACE, show any particulate gold then the whole assay is suspect and has to be done w/a portion of the remaining 750grams, supposedly reserved for verification purposes.
Before you ask, Yes, I'm implying that come of the "reserve 750 grams" has been consumed in some samples simply because there is no other way to conduct a check assay, unless you don't use all 750g in the first place.
Winer sez: Professor your argument is inconclusive. That is all I have learned. I need to know why it is as difficult for all lab technicians around the world as it is for you to arrive at accurate results.
O/49r RESPONSE: Here is the reason: Time constraints. Personnel do not have all the same skills. Flux ingredients aren't meticulously measured on a scale first before added to a crucible. Lack of oxidant addition to cyanide. Sometimes done in cold cyanide. Sometimes done in hot cyanide. Sometimes done in cyanide that is jiiiist right. (Yes, like the 3 Bear's story) Sometimes there is interruptions. Sometimes there are lunch hours where different personnel take over in the middle of the process and does it THEIR WAY, instead of the other guy's/gal's way. The assay furnace temperature fluctuates. A crucible breaks because it's been used too much. (Yes, crucibles are re-used--sometimes 3-4 times, sometimes only once, depending on lab supplies) do you get the picture yet????
Winer continues: I think I can understand why it is difficult for you, and you admirably show us that you go to the limits of your knowledge of practical, technical, and artitistic aspects to get it right as much as possible. This attempt to convince me, however, that as you have a personal struggle against incompetence, so do the lab technicians in an Indo lab, does not quite work. From what you have presented here, it is just as likely that they are more competent than you are.
o/49rs RESPONSE: Sure you aren't related to Wild Bilge here? The premise that I'm incompetent is totally rejected and an insult.
Winer continues: Yours is, after all, an entirely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
And you, sir, are as much a Whiner now as when I nicknamed you such on Prodigy threads many many months ago. Don't both writing again. Outsiders such as you who piss on proferring by the "competent" such as myself, give a whole new meaning to the assignation: Pearls before Swine!
Ole Competent, Doing IT, Making Money Doing it, and far more qualified to judge what is competent and what is just human than you are, Whiner!--49r |
