ON THE DRESSING OF ORES / Methods and Machines of the 1870s by John
Darlington, Mining Engineer, Author of Miner’s Handbook. From Ure’s
Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines Edited by Robert Hunt FRS
(1878) 2002 pp vii + 72-161, 127 illus. SB £12.95 post free in the UK
from the publisher, Dragonwheel Books, Sandcott, Rectory Lane,
Pulborough, West Sussex, RH20 2AD.
Visit a disused metal mine today and you could well wonder how the mine
was operated. Any implement made of wood or metal will have long gone,
either decayed or recycled. This reprint of a rare and expensive book
will go some way in to showing some of the tools and equipment being used in
the halcyon days of British metal mining. The contents include
washing and separating ores, grinding and crushing machinery, stamps,
jigging machinery, separators or classifiers, the strake, tye and strip,
sand and slime dressing machinery, forwarding and lifting apparatus. The
descriptions are brought to live with some fine steel engravings. There are
a lot of interesting facts: eg spalling was usually performed by women.
This was the breaking up of the stone to the proper size for the bucking
hammer or crushing mill. The hammer was made of cast steel and was set with
a light pliant handle. It weighed about 16 ounces and cost eightpence. A
practised spaller could produce about one ton of stuff a day. The book then
goes on to describe the work of the stone breaker. Here, a machine with 24
inch jaws needed 15 horse power but could produce 13 cubic yards of stone an
hour.
Then there is the Arrastre or Tahona. This was a horse or mule power
machine which could grind silver ores to powder ready for amalgamation.
A unique insight into Victorian machinery which could be compared to
works of art, and which, in many instances, were far ahead of their time.
TO
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