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By O. W. Shimer, D. C. Helms, C. E. Brown

The early history and progress of anthracite stripping, from the first known operation at Summit Hill in 1821 through 1917, was covered in 1917 in a paper by J. B. Warriner,1 then chief engineer, now president of the Lehigh Navigation Coal Co., and stripping methods between 1917 and 1931 were the subject of a paper in 1931 by H. H. Otto,2 of the Hudson Coal Company. . The present paper is confined to methods used today on pitching beds in the western middle and southern anthracite fields. The anthracite industry, not unlike other large industries, had been affected for more than a decade by the adverse economic conditions of the country. High development and operating costs and the competition of other fuels caused some collieries to be closed temporarily, while others were permanently abandoned. In order to obtain a larger tonnage at a lower development cost, a larger stripping program was put into effect by many companies. In 1932, stripping operations accounted for 3½ million tons, or 7 per cent of the total anthracite production of the year, and in the next 10 years this increased until more than double that amount, or over 14 per cent of the total production, was from stripping operations. These figures represent the total production of the entire anthracite region; unfortunately, the figures have not been separated from the different fields. There are some operations in the southern and middle western fields where the tonnage obtained from stripping amounts to more than 30 per cent of the total colliery production. Stripping operations on pitching beds present difficult problems. Owing to the various geological formations, a different situation is encountered in nearly every stripping pit; and because of the proximity of an overlying bed, it is very often necessary to load the entire overburden into trucks and haul it out of the pit to the dump area, although back filling and casting is done whenever possible. Beds in the areas described in this paper pitch from 20" to 90 and some are on the invert in many sharp folds and faults. Planning The more successful strippings have had adequate engineering analysis. Some work is being done without much preliminary planning, but many strippings would have failed completely if close supervision by the engineering department had not been . maintained. Locations of stripping areas are determined as follows: I. By constructing cross sections over the areas and drilling sufficient diamond-drill or well drill holes to study the strata and to determine the location, thickness

Jan 1, 1944

By R. H. Swallow, George Hess

Aerial photography was once a crude, uncertain tool. Today it is a precision mapping instrument which saves important time and money for strip mining and other industry. Aerial photography began in the boxkite days of aviation. The Army first used it for rough reconnaissance photographs. Then, in the early Twenties, industry began to use aerial photographs of their plants and facilities for advertising or annual reports. The quality of these pictures was not very good by today's standards, but this work began the development of better cameras, better lenses, better photographic techniques.

Jan 1, 1949

By Sheldon P. Wimpfen

EVERYWHERE in mining circles the talk is of this new development of hard faced or insert bits which hints of many changes to come in mining practice and rock drill equipment. In the past fifteen years new equipment has appeared in rapid succession which brought one change after another in rock breaking practice. Detachable bits were an innovation which met with wide success. Blasthole diamond drilling has proven itself. Only recently, fusion piercing was announced as a possible solution to the problem of breaking taconite ores. For several years this interest in new methods has been growing and various experimental usages of tungsten carbides in rotary type rock drilling bits have been partially successful. American experts in rock drilling have been concerned with the subject for ten years but actual commercial practice was begun by European manufacturers and mining companies. At this time nearly every manufacturer of rock drilling bits is working on some type of an insert bit. On the Rand, European manufacturers are testing out various types of insert bits. The problems relating to rock drilling in South Africa vary greatly from ours. The bulk of the drilling there is limited to the 31/2-ft holes that are drilled for breaking the gold bearing reef ore. Rock drilling in most mines is far more diversified. Both drifting and ore breaking call for holes varying in length from 4 ft up to as much as 50 ft and more.

Jan 1, 1947

By M. Schwartz, S. K. Nash, R. Zeman

Knoop hardness in the rolling plane and in the longitudinal plane of hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheets of sublimed magnesiu?w was measured as a function of the angle between the long axis of the indenter and the rolling direction. These measurements were correlated with similar data taken on the (0001) and (1010) planes of a single crystal of magnesium where the hardness was measured as a function of the angle between the long axis of the indenter and the [1120] direction. The results were analyzed for compliance with the hypothesis of Daniels and Dunm to account for slip, and with a similar hypothesis to account for twinning. Some hardness anisotropy data are also presented for magnesium-indium and magnesium-lithium solid solution alloys. It is well known that the hardness of a crystalline specimen is different for its different surfaces, and also that the hardness is a function of direction within a single surface. Variations in hardness for single crystals have been found to be much larger than those for polycrystalline materials. Also, materials having low crystal symmetry were found to have a greater anisotropy of hardness than those of high symmetry. 0'Neill1 and Pfeil,2 using a 1-mm Brine11 ball, studied single crystals of aluminum and iron, respectively; and they found a variation of hardness of about 10 pct between readings taken along the principal crystallographic faces. Daniels and Dunn3 found that the Knoop hardness number varied about 25 pct as the long axis of the indenter rotated on the basal plane of a zinc single crystal. The variation on the (1450) plane was about 100 pct, and the average hardness on this plane was about twice that of the basal plane. They also studied the variation of hardness within the (loo), (110), and (111) faces of a single crystal of silicon ferrite and found variations of about 25 pct although the average values for these planes were almost identical. Single crystals of zinc were also studied by Meincke.4 He found that the Vickers hardness numbers varied about 30 pct depending on whether the axis of the indenter was parallel or perpendicular to the (1010) and (1110) planes. Mott and Ford,5 using a Knoop indenter, found a 25 pct variation in hardness on the basal plane of zinc. Crow and Hinsley6 studied heavily cold-rolled bronze, steel, brass, copper, and other metals. They found that the difference in hardness numbers based on the difference in the length of the diagonals of the Vickers indenter was from 5 to 12 pct. Some minerals and synthetic stones show a very large anisotropy of hardness. Robertson and Van Meter7 found the Vickers hardness of arsenopyrite to vary from 633 to 1148 kg per mm2. stern8 using the double-cone method on synthetic corundum found the hardness number to vary from 950 to 2070. And winchell9 reported a variation of hardness number from 184 to 1205 in kyanite. The variation of hardness as a function of direction in a given crystallographic plane in single crystals possesses a periodicity which is related to the symmetry of the lattice. Daniels and Dunn3 found a six-fold periodicity of hardness in the (0001) plane of zinc. They found that the hardness curves of silicon ferrite had a four-fold symmetry in the (100) plane, a two-fold symmetry in the (110) plane, and a six-fold symmetry in the (111) plane. Mott and Ford5 also reported a six-fold symmetry of hardness in the basal plane of zinc. And vacher10 found two-, four-, and six-fold periodicities of hardness in copper on the (110), (100), and (111) planes, respectively. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an investigation on the anisotropy of hardness as a function of orientation in single crystals of mannes-ium, and samples of rolled magnesium, magnesium-indium, and magnesium-lithium solid solution alloys. The anisotropy of hardness of pure magnesium which had been hot rolled, and then cold rolled various amounts to fracture, was studied by means of Knoop indentation hardness numbers; and the results were correlated with the preferred orientation as determined by quantitative X-ray pole-figure data. A comparison was made of the hardness data obtained from the rolled sheets and those of single crystals of magnesium. In order to obtain a more fundamental understanding of the variation of hardness and of Knoop hardness testing, the data were analyzed by

Jan 1, 1962

By John V. Beall

GOING west from Denver on Route 6, the direct road to Grand Junction, one gets the first glimpse of mining a few miles east of Denver near Idaho Springs where the workings of defunct gold mines are visible on the sides of mountains along the highway. One enterprising company is turning a profit by showing tourists through the mine and mill and then selling them gold samples on the way out. We have always known that mining people are ingenious, but this proves it. About five and a half hours fast driving west from Denver brings one to Rifle, Colo., which is the site of the oil shale mine, retorting plant, and refinery of the U. S. Bureau of Mines. As you drive up to the mine, you can see a portal high on the face of the cliff in front of you where the mine surface plant literally hangs by its toenails. Below, the retorting plant and refinery gleam in the sunlight. Up at the mine, Fred Wright will show you how the oil shale is extracted in two benches (a third bench would be used for commercial mining) by the room-and-pillar method. In mining the top level, an underground crew of thirteen men have been able to produce 1500 tons of shale in each eight-hour shift. To do this, the mine is thoroughly mechanized. The mining method is de- scribed in the September issue of Mining Engineering.

Jan 1, 1949

By A. W. WALKER

All branches of production engineering showed steady and definite progress during 1941. Most of it has been of the slower and more conservative type rather than the sensational. To a large degree the changes have been influenced by the expanding war economy, and this tendency will probably be even more marked during the coming year. The stress of the times is placing more emphasis on the principles of engineering and conservation, with the object of obtaining the greatest possible recovery with a minimum waste or expenditure of equipment. Also available material supplies are often being turned to new uses.

Jan 1, 1942

By Lyon F. Terry

ACCEPTED current practice for A the valuation of mineral property is based upon Hoskold's theory and valuation tables first published in 1877, and popularized by Herbert Hoover's "Principles of Mining" issued in 1909. In more recent years the procedure has been developed further in the course of the extensive valuation work required for Federal taxation purposes. The 1-aluation of oil and gas properties and of mines is based upon the same principle-the estimation of the present worth of future net revenues. However, in valuing oil and gas properties the method used for discounting future revenues differs somewhat from that adopted for mines, owing principally to the nature of the re- source. production from oil and gas properties usually declines from year to year, whereas coal and ore de- posits are adapted to a more uniform rate of output.

Jan 1, 1940

By S. Zador, C. B. Alcock, K. Sudo

Measurements have been made of the standard free enevgies of formation of the sulfates of cobalt, Cupric copper, nickel, and ferric iron in the temperature range of 750° to 950°C. Dynamic gas-solid techniques have been employed in which oxide-sulfate and basic sulfate mixtures were placed in a stream of gas of controlled SO3 potentials. Thermal analysis and thermogvavimetry were used as detection methods, and it was found THE formation of sulfates during the roasting of sulfide ores is now considered to arise in many cases from the interaction of sulfur trioxide in the gas and the metal oxide which is formed on the sulfide as a first step.' As a preliminary to the investigation of the kinetics of sulfate formation during roasting, measurements have been made of equilibria from which the free energies of formation of cobalt, copper, nickel, and iron sulfates can be that the range of temperatures which could be investigated and the choice of method was largely controlled by the kinetics of these gas-solid reactions. The results are compared with previous results obtained from static measurements with which they agree quite well, and calculations have been made employing themal data to interrelate the present results with those for other sulfates. calculated. The method used has been to expose the solid sulfate (or basic sulfate) to a controlled flowing gas mixture of SO,, 02, and SOs and to observe the temperature of decomposition. The onset of decomposition was detected by thermal analysis or thermogravimetry. EXPERIMENTAL METHODS The thermal-analysis method was similar to that employed by Dewing and Richardson.' The sulfate was dehydrated at 250°C in air, and placed in a small alumina crucible which was held by a quartz ring in the hot zone of a horizontal furnace. The reaction tube of this furnace was made of mullite.

Jan 1, 1965

By C. H. Benedict

Largest and most important of the milling plants under construction during the year is the Morenci plant of the Phelps Dodge Corp., in Arizona, where plans are being rushed for production in 1942. Grate mills will be used for fine-grinding, and in the pilot plant, classifiers of the spiral type have the preference for the closed- circuit work. The flotation units will be chiefly of the pneumatic type, with some mechanical units as auxiliaries. The Fagergren, Pan American, and Agitair machines were left in the competition as the year closed. If the absence of European markets for finished products has dislocated the mining industry, fortunately the lack of raw materials required in the beneficiation of ores has not been serious. except possibly as to the inability to import flint grinding pebbles. Some of the less important gold mines still use pebbles for grinding as is also the practice in the comminution of nonmetallics used in various industries. T the Calumet & Hecla in the Lake A Superior copper district pebbles have been used exclusively in open- circuit grinding in the Hardinge mills treating the

Jan 1, 1941

"Butte originated as a placer mining camp. The first gold discovery was made in the year 1864, near what is now Main Street. Placer mining was vigorously prosecuted along Silver Bow Creek and in Missoula, Buffalo, Town and Parrot gulches for a period of five years, at the end of which time, in 1870, the camp was practically deserted. In the meantime, the quartz veins so prominently traceable over the hillsides were located, the first location being made by W. L. Farlin and called the Black Chief claim, and later restaked as the Travona. Reasoning from the presence of the gold placers, free-milling gold ores were eagerly looked for by the early prospectors. Claims covering the great Rainbow and other silver lodes were located in the sixties. The presence of valuable silver ores in these veins caused the staking out of many claims, believed to be valuable only for silver, but which later proved to be enormous copper producers.Treatment of these early discovered rich ores was first attempted in arrastres. Later, stamp mills were built. The Centennial dropping 10 stamps, was the first, and in 1875 Mr. Farlin built the Dexter 10-stamp mill, intro¬ducing chloridizing-roasting. More successful processes were soon introduced and several large mills built, among which were the Alice, Lexington, Silver Bow, Moulton and Bluebird, in all representing a total of 290 stamps. The silver mining industry reached its zenith in 1887 and declined rapidly in the early nineties, following the sudden drop in the price of silver in 1892.During this period of silver mining activity the business of copper mining was making rapid strides. Development of the veins, located as silver veins, had uncovered copper ore in many instances. There was great activity in ""claim staking'' in the years from 1871 to 1879, during which period most of the claims covering the present productive copper area were located."

Jan 1, 1913

"The greatest mining center in the state of Utah is the incorporated town of Bingham about twenty-five miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The principal industry of this vicinity, prior to the early fall of 1 863, was lumbering and the first saw-mill in the state was built near the mouth of Bingham Canyon. Early in the fall of that year, George B. Ogilvie discovered gold and shortly afterward the first mining district in the state was organized. Some writers place the discovery of gold in the canyon in the late fifties. If this be so, however, the matter was kept extremely quiet because no mining was engaged in until after Ogilvie's discovery.Bingham was a placer mining camp, producing about one million dollars' worth of dust and nuggets from placers up and down the canyon and in Bear Gulch until early in the seventies, or about ten years after the discovery of gold, when a large body of argentiferous lead ore was discovered and soon after heavy shipments were made from a half dozen or more properties.In 1 8 74, A. H. and George L. Bemis erected the first concentrating plant in the state for the treatment of sulphide lead ores.The history of the camp as a producer of copper begins in the summer of 1 88 7, when Enos A. Wall noticed, in observing prospecting drifts and inclines driven some years before, the discoloration caused by the coppery solution. As a large part of the adjacent ground had been abandoned, he located two claims, which he called the ""Dick Mackintosh"" and the ""Charles Reid,"" after two of his friends.Late in 1896, the Highland Boy Mine produced sulphide ore rich in copper, causing a revival of interest in the copper potentialities of the camp, and during the next seven years a number of new claims were located ."

Jan 1, 1925

By Thomas T. Read

EVERYONE engaged in the teaching of mining engineering will, I suppose, agree that the most difficult subject to teach is "Mining Methods." One primary difficulty is that the students taking the course have either had no previous experience in mining, or else they have had; either seeming to be somewhat of a drawback. The students who are unfamiliar with mines find it difficult to visualize underground conditions, as described and illustrated with sketches and maps, while those who have had underground experience seem to 'find it difficult to visualize anything much different from that which they have already seen. This reminds one of the remark about the Presbyterian doctrine of predestination, to the effect that "you are damned ,if you do; and damned if you don't."

Jan 1, 1930

By AIME AIME

A CORPORATION would go into bankruptcy if its affairs were conducted as are those of the state of New York, according to the Committee on New York State Government Reorganization of the American Engineering Council of the Federated American Engineering Societies, in a report to the chairman, of the Joint Judiciary Committees of the Senate and Assembly. The report, just made public, was signed by the three members of the committee who were appointed by Herbert Hoover. They were H. de-B. Parsons, chair- man, Paul G. Brown and Lewis B. Stillwell. Although the American Engineering Council is a national organization, it decided to aid in governmental reorganization in New York State because of the magnitude of the task. The Council's committee in its report urged the passage of three state reorganization amendments for consolidation of departments, an executive budget system, and a four-year term for the higher state officials. In the words of the report :

Jan 1, 1921

By J. D. Price, W. M. Bertholf

One of the chief difficulties with which the operator of a coal washing plant has been forced to contend is the handling of the very fine coal. First he has the problem of separating the fine coal from washery water. This is usually accomplished by the use of settling cones or Dorr thickeners: in either event the separated fine coal contains a high amount (40 to 80 pct) of water and, somewhat loosely, dependent upon the size of the coal particles present, may be known as sludge or slurry. His second problem is the satisfactory further dewatering of such separated sludge and/or slurry.

Jan 1, 1949

By Jose J. Alvarez

INTRODUCTION Three major plant processes control the operation of an uranium in-situ mining plant. The three pro- cesses can be categorized under the headings termed - loading, elution, and precipitation. All other plant processes can be subcategorized under the three. In summary, the major plant processes in an in- situ mining plant are: 1. Loading - The pregnant lixiviant from the production wells flows through anion exchange resin. The loading of the uranium on the resin is controlled by various factors, such as ionic strength, valence, functional groups, etc. 2. Elution - The uranium-loaded resin is eluted or regenerated by a high ionic strength solution. The effluent from this process is de- fined as the pregnant eluate. 3 . Precipitation - The pregnant eluate is chemically treated to attain the ideal conditions for the selective precipitation of uranium. Hydrogen peroxide is an ideal precipitating agent under URI conditions. This paper will focus on two of the major processes: Elution and Precipitation. For the most part this relatively young industry has grasped the theory of liquids in continuous flow for the operation of the plant processes. Likewise, URI initially operated the two processes of interest with the continuous flow concept. Through laboratory experiments, URI has abandoned the flow concept and operates the eluting and precipitating stages with the concept of "batch" processes, whereby only one container, filled to a specified liquid level, is chemically processed. In the proceeding sections, each of the two pro- cesses will be discussed in detail, from their original concept to the present operation. Only minor modifications were made to the existing circuits for the conversion with results revealing a greater level of efficiency. ELUTION The elution of the loaded anion exchange resin can be achieved by different high ionic strength solutions. The selection of constituents is dependent on both chemical and economic considerations (i .e., efficiency and operating/restoration factors). The regenerant presently used is a pH 9.5 solution containing 7.5% NaCl and a mixture of Na2C03/NaHC03. expressed as 2.5% NaHC03.

Jan 1, 1980

By NILS DANIELSEN

THE name of Swedish charcoal iron will probably bring to the memory of many old consumers an extremely tough and ductile iron which was formerly used in considerable quantities for common blacksmith purposes. To-day very little of this iron goes to such kind of work. Swedish charcoal iron is merely a speciality which is chosen whenever its remark¬able properties can be utilized. By giving a rough sketch of the manufacturing process of Swedish charcoal iron, the character of the iron, its weak as well as its strong points will more easily be understood. Swedish charcoal iron is a wrought iron also known in the United States under the name of Norway iron and Swedish Lancashire iron. The name Norway iron seems to have been attached to the product for the reason that in the earlier days it was generally brought into the States by Norwegian ships. However no iron of this kind is now made in Norway. The reason for the name Swedish Lancashire iron is that the manufac¬turing process emanated from Lancashier in England, the method being generally adopted in Sweden in the years 1831-1850. Today this iron is, with the exception of one plant in the United States, made in no place in the world outside of Sweden.

Jan 1, 1924

By Philip D. Wilson

FEAST and famine-or, chronologically, famine and feast-have characterized the aluminum supply program during 1943. Fortunately for the war effort the famine phase is over and aluminum production is now in the happy position of being abundantly able to supply all the requirements of the armed services plus a monthly surplus which is building up a substantial stock pile as a reserve against any contingencies. But the present condition of oversupply cannot be attributed to the super-efficiency of the aluminum production program which was designed to take care of the over-all requirements of the war with little or no margin of safety. The present more than comfortable situation is due primarily to the fact that the armed services generally have not consumed anything approaching the amount of aluminum which their requirement estimates indicated.

Jan 1, 1944

By Walter R. Hibbard, Walter L. Finlay

INTRODUCTION THE key feature of the lattice coherency theory of precipitation hardening1-6 is the forced coherence between matrix and precipitate which elastically strains both lattices and is believed to be the major source of strengthening in precipitation hardening. In systems exhibiting age hardening, the atom movements leading to precipitation are not at all extensive and are such as to require the minimum amount of energy to produce the interface; that is, the new lattice forms in such a way as to be as nearly as possible a continuation of the old with a matched, coherent plane at the interface at least during the initiation of the precipitation. The crystallographic sequence whereby regions of the matrix change to the precipitate lattice usually can be resolved into a set of shearing operations.5,6 Conversely, the perhaps novel speculation is made that solution of a second phase is accompanied by shearing movements which are possibly the reverse of the precipitation shearing movements. A basic premise of the investigation reported in this paper is that precipitation and solution shearing movements constitute structural weaknesses which might cooperate with applied stresses to facilitate plastic deformation. Another basic premise of the investigation is that the application of hydrostatic pressure to a precipitation hardening system will significantly alter the degree of disregistry across the matrix-precipitate interface and thereby significantly affect the course of age hardening. Two binary precipitation hardening systems were investigated: 12 pct zinc in aluminum which undergoes transformations, both precipitation and solution, by a simple crystallographic mechanism; and 4 pct copper in aluminum which undergoes a complex transformation in precipitating and dissolving a second phase. The effects of the application of uniaxial tensile creep stress during elevated temperature aging of both systems and of hydrostatic pressure during the elevated temperature aging of 12 pct aluminum-zinc were then investigated. Previous Investigations Van Wert in 1935,7 studied the effect of hydrostatic pressure on the room temperature age hardening of a few precipitation hardening systems. The latter were rather unfortunately selected since none is known to exhibit any marked volume change on aging and the majority were complex commercial alloys the precipitation mechanisms of which are not known. Jenkins, Bucknall and Jenkinson,8 in 1944, applied tensile creep stresses to a complex coppernickel-silicon alloy at various temperatures. The complexity of the alloy and the industrial objective of the work did not permit an appreciable addition to the theoretical understanding of either deformation or precipitation hardening.

Jan 1, 1948

By William B. Plank

RECENT interest in the character of employment of young mining engineering graduates has been stimulated by my studies, during the past ten years, of student enrollment and employment of graduates of the mineral technology schools of the United States and Canada. Enrollment data in the following article are taken from these studies and information about the kind of work engaged in by mining engineers is assembled from my professional experience, sixteen years of which have been as professor of mining engineering.

Jan 1, 1938

By M. A. Roche

AST fall over half a million tons of ore and rock were broken in one blast at the open pit of the Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Company's operation, at Flin Flon, Manitoba. The following particulars of the blast, and details of the preparatory work, indicate how an operation of this scope is carried out. The data given, in essentially the present form, were first published by The Canadian Mining Journal. The area blasted was 150 ft. wide and about 700 ft. long. A total of 123 tons of 50 per cent forcite gelatin, in 5 by 16-in. cartridges, was used for the charge. Drilling for the blast was started on May 29, and was completed late in August, requiring 1297 machine shifts for drilling only. Total footage drilled for the shot was over 5 miles of 6-in. hole. The main blast consisted of 232 holes spaced on 17.5-ft.

Jan 1, 1934