Agricola, Georgius, De re metallica, 1912/1950

Table of figures

< >
< >
page |< < of 679 > >|
1 192[Figure 192]
A—TROUGH. B—ITS OPEN END. C—END THAT MAY BE CLOSED. D—STREAM.
E—HOE. F—END-BOARD. G—BAG.
with a small quantity of heavy sand, have settled in the trough, they wash
in a bowl and collect in bags and carry away with them.
Some people wash this kind of sand in a large bowl which can easily be
shaken, the bowl being suspended by two ropes from a beam in a building.
The sand is thrown into it, water is poured in, then the bowl is shaken, and
the muddy water is poured out and clear water is again poured in, this being
done again and again.
In this way, the gold particles settle in the back part
of the bowl because they are heavy, and the sand in the front part because it
is light; the latter is thrown away, the former kept for smelting.
The one
who does the washing then returns immediately to his task.
This method
of washing is rarely used by miners, but frequently by coiners and goldsmiths
when they wash gold, silver, or copper.
The bowl they employ has only
three handles, one of which they grasp in their hands when they shake the
bowl, and in the other two is fastened a rope by which the bowl is hung from
a beam, or from a cross-piece which is upheld by the forks of two upright
posts fixed in the ground.
Miners frequently wash ore in a small bowl to test

Text layer

  • Dictionary
  • Places

Text normalization

  • Original
  • Regularized
  • Normalized

Search


  • Exact
  • All forms
  • Fulltext index
  • Morphological index