New York Paper - School Laboratory-Work: Sampling of an Ore Containing Coarse Gold

The little stamp-mill in the mining laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the work done by it have been well described by Prof. R. H. Richards and E. E. Bugbee in a paper read at the Albany meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, February, 1903.' As run for student class-work the mill contains a feeder, stamps, plate, and vanner. Results in the past indicate that the work of these machines is just as efficient as that of a regular mill handling the same class of ore. It has been the custom to obtain ore principally from Nova Scotia, mainly because it is the nearest source of supply, and also because there is a considerable saving in freight-cost as compared with other districts. The gold in Nova Scotia ores is notoriously coarse, and for this reason it is almost impossible to obtain satisfactory results by sampling and fire-assay, unless an extremely large lot of ore is crushed and all of the contained gold pellets are saved. A very interesting and most extraordinary example of this fact has been presented by a recent run in the Technology stamp-mill. Since the capacity of the mill is about 60 kg. per hr., and since in about 5-hr. run the students in any one section have an opportunity to make the necessary study of machines, it usually happens that several runs are made from one lot of ore. When the shipment is received it is first dried and weighed, put through the Blake breaker, set at 1 or 1.5 in., and the crushed product is piled in a cone on the sampling-floor. When the crushing is completed the ore is usually stored away in barrels for future use; it is aimed to have each barrel of