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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4327 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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More of a Friday Fun post, aside from my minor questions, but here are some updates on the mining:

Winter slowed things down, but I now have a shaker table, a jaw crusher, a propane furnace, a non-functional ball-mill, a 55-gallon drum of sulfuric acid, and a ramshackle shack.

First concentration runs with the table were interesting, but not particularly good. Managing angle and flow across the table is harder than I expected, and I seem to have lost about as much good material as I got. Regardless, I ended up with some buckets of concentrates to play with which will hopefully inform me what's in the rock or extractable.

Acid leaching is honestly shockingly simple and easy. I've got blue crystals containing copper and other metals now, and was able to melt them into small nuggets of a pinkish copper/silver/gold mix, with swirls of color throughout. Biggest issue would be scale. Doing it in small trays is easy, but IDK if I'd want to deal with larger amounts of acid. Does anyone know if there's a market for small irregularly shaped blobs of metal, maybe as a craft thing?

As I progress, I'm becoming increasingly aware of the daunting task of metal extraction that's coming up. I can get some basic amount of mixed metal blocks by furnacing, but actually separating the different metals is much more chemistry than I'd like to have on my hands. Which brings me to my main question: does anyone here have knowledge or experience shipping concentrates to a refinery? If I could simply do the concentration as I have been, either through acid or crushing and tabling, and then sell it to the professionals, I'd be sitting pretty. I've been away from polite society for a good while, so I've been putting off sending emails. Maybe ChatGPT can help.

I'd try to find a blacksmith making trinkets on YouTube. Then form a partnership where you make videos on metal extraction, he makes videos on making trinkets out of blobs of metal, then you sell the results on Etsy or something.

There's more of a market for videos of interesting hobbies than for blobs of metal. You could even just make keychains or something yourself and sell those as merch.

You'll never be competitive on price compared to metals produced on an industrial scale. However the process sounds interesting to watch.

That shit is beyond me or anyone I know.

The only thing I've seen is a furnace version of a fractional still in the boondocks of central America; where they would melt down scrap and pour off whatever floated to the top till they ended up with something approximating iron.

I was wondering about you. Glad to hear that you got a shaker table setup going. I have no further suggestions but I'm pleased to see the update.

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