<font color=red>Charters!!! STOP Making this stuff up. Enough already!!
You wrote: Nitric acid was used. It is cheaper by far than mercury and that was what they used.
Dilute nitric--which is EXACTLYwhat you would have if you added a few drops of N to a pan of WET concentrates-- dissolves the mercury, and heat just makes the dissolving of mercury go faster!
Every miner--then and now-- knows that.
I REPEAT: dilute nitric puts Hg (mercury) into solution, i.e., dissolves your mercury--it turns the nitric the palest of faint yellow in the process. Therefore, no amalgamation is even possible if there is no mercury in its "solid" form. Mercury is always coming "unglued" with the introduction of nitric to the AMALGAMATION process.
Evidently the non-miner historian/author of your copy/paste piece didn't know much about mercury except campfire tales when s/he wrote whatever it is you are quoting for these last few weeks on this GPM thread re: gold mining history.
You continue
You did not want to roast your pan in a fire to drive mercury as the fumes were unbelieveably poisonous and that much heat would warp and ruin the pan. Pans would be in short supply for that frequent purpose and tools came first. While agree on the poisonous bit, but we don't agree on the "warping" bit!!!
Again, mostly fiction...
NOT ONLY were copper pans primarily used for amalgamating extremely small gold fines from their blacksands' host, IF nitric were to have been truly the coup de tat, it would have immediately begun to attack the surface of the metallic pan(s) and begin to put the goldpan's surface metal into solution as well!!!
Furthermore, the favorite metallic amalgamating tool of the miner was NOT his steel goldpan per se,but his #10 shovel for campfire amalgamation.
And lastly,
NO-ONE put pan NOR shovel into the roaring fire to drive off the mercury...no, mercury begins to go gaseous, i.e., volatizes about 72 degrees Fahrenheit...most campfire COALS are hotter than that...no need to be silly about "pan warping heat" being requried to accomplish gold dust fines' amalgamating at end of day.
Secondly, not only did miners NOT carry flasks of nitric around with them, they didn't carry "oven mitts" around with them either, nor potholders to protect their grubby hands when reaching into the campfire coals to extract their hot pans with their golden leftovers in the bottom...
Nope, a miner just grabbed the shovel handle and pushed and pullled it in and out of the fire, downwind of course as need arose to control the "pan warping temperatures". Especially, if a potato weren't handy for refining and reducing, that is..
AGAIN, one of the tip-offs that you are quoting a badly uninformed "source" text is your concern about mercury shattering into jillions of tiny mercury globules!!!
If you're using mercury that badly parts and beads up aka shatters into a million tiny globules, you AND the oldtimer miners were working with unclean mercury, and/or mercury which has lost its "charge."
PULEEZE don't comeback with the myth that nitric was used to "sharpen" mercury --so that it would gather or aglomerate better." That's another "old miner's tale" not borne out in science. (sharpen the mercury, silly...not sharpen the shovel !!) Nitic might brighten the tiny gold, true, but make mercury work better? HARDLY! No one in their right scientific mind would claim dissolved mercury works better than "solid, liquid mercury" in aglomerating gold dust particles. And NO ONE is going to believe a rapidly dissolving goldpan is going to catch any gold dust either.
And while pyrites were common, yes, not many "sturdy glass containers devoted solely to mixing up a USDA daily requirement of nitric using nitre/sulfur/pyrites and heat to make corrosive nitric" were laying around in the old campsites of the early miner either.
But leave it to a non-miner historian to think nitric could be rustled up, aka "heated" in metal goldpans and shovels, like a mess o'cold beans and jerky could be rustled up on a moment's notice at end of day. There was another negative reason for non-nitric prevelance back in those days: nitric poisoning, since nitric could be absorbed through the skin and attack a miner's hand joings. Nope, NO percentages in handling nitric with bare hands either...nitric poisoning and immediate burning of skin is not fun. Nitric burned hands couldn't pan well, because they were cracked, purpleish, peeling, bleeding and very painful. The burns occured immediately, the cracking within about 48 hours, the peeling shortly thereafter
Not exactly what a miner handling a shovel, rockerbox, or fishing out oversize rocks when panning concentrates needed to joyfully pursue his craft, agreed?!!!
Better find another historian's account of mercury amalgamation in the Klondike era, Eric. This one has let you down majorly.
And the thing that is the funniest about your pseudo-scientific/historical account about all this is simply this fact:
the amalgamating of gold-dust using mercury was most commonly accomplished by the twisting the amalgam through a wet chamois skin kept expressly for THAT purpose. The twisting of the wet chamois forced the mercury out through the deceased animal skin's pores, leaving the heavier golddust behind in a now tightish little glob. Now, THERE is an abundant, NON-corrosive, historically accurate gold amalgamation "tool" fer ya!
I suspect the non-miner historian you are quoting is also the same broad who wrote the fanciful Sutter's Mill "version" you posted on here about 4 weeks back. Sounds about her speed, frankly.
TO SUMMARIZE:
No nitric in miners' pants pockets--CA 49r gold rush NOR klondike version. Ever wonder about the Carolina/Georgia gold rush that predates both those version from your favorite "creative historian" author?
No glass containers lying around to do the nitric reduction du jour either.
No oven mitt or potholders laying around campfires. Never seen a historical replica one in all the goldrush museums of this world either.
No ancient "tinfoil" Reynolds-type wrap for entombing the hapless tuber...
No shortage of goldpans, steel or copper--maybe green plastic garret pans were in short supply tho'....
No shortage of shovels. (No shortage of metal coffee cups, either.)
No glass pyrex dishes for cooking up nitric acid from a few pyrites and nitre either.
No plastic gloves to protect miners' hands from nitric burns.
YES!!!!!!
Lot's of pieces of very lightweight and very portable and very wetable chamois skin in goldrush museums, and illustrated in history books of accurately written gold lore.
Me thinks you've pushed your fanciful and revisionist historical accounts just a tad too far, Eric.
First we've endured this California broad's interp of the Sutter's Mill find and NOW
you're asking the gullible to accept without question [her??] account of just how nitric dissolving mercury saved the Klondike miner's gold dusty ass??? How'd she explain DISSOLVED mercury in liquid nitric amalgamates tiny gold dust again????----.)
I further suspect that part about the "CIBC lending to miners" was also her fanciful imagination at work as well.
MOST GOLD LOANS to the dirty, smelly, rough goldminer were made by the red-light district "ladies."
Hers were terms a miner could understand and accept; aka, NO collateral and NO loan interest.
(The only interest she requried was about 10 minutes worth of stimulating conversation per smelly, drunken miner. She also had the best "collection ratio" in the history of gold mining!!
It's unfortunate you've recopied and posted such tripe here. One doesn't need to be alive in 1897-99 in the Klondike era to dig deeper than you have when posting tripe as truth.
Remember to NOT confuse the cleaning of gold pan concentrates, with the cleaning of mercury. I don't care how many warped pans you've stumbled over in your lifetime in Timmins, Ontario. Roasting SULFIDES and the resulting release of values due to the breakdown sulfides with head, which makes gold available for mercury amalgamation is NOT the same thing as gathering golddust with mercury and twisting through a wet chamois.
Furthermore, did it ever occur to you that warped pans could be due to the weaking of the metallic pan due to heavy nitric use, and not intense heat to dissipate mercury as you claimed in your earlier fanciful post? Just because one finds a warped goldpan doesn't mean one has stumbled across a nest of truly bright goldminers in this world, historically or in modern times.
Sorry, Eric. Detention for a whole week for you, Eric.
PLUS no car, and no allowance either...and that's for a month!
gold_tutor, AUthor
and "practical, pragmatic historian" with thanks to my mentor, Claud
mailto:claudminer@aol.com |
