Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1877-08-09
THE DRY PROCESS.
A New Discovery in Placer Mining.
[From the Stockton (Cal,) Independent

From the Stockton (Cal,) Independent
During the past few years mechanical in
genuity has accomplished much in the way
of inventing and improving machinery des-
ignated to separate gold from quartz, yet lit
tie inclination or effort has been exhibited to
make any departure from the rude methods
of placer mining in vogue when the noun
tain gulches and ravines were thronged with
hardy pioneers in search of the precious
metal. The rocker, long-tom and sluice-box
were the appliances used to separate the yel-
low dust from the gravel in the beds OF the
cases supply of water was indispensable,
and "the wet season" was as much the har-
vest season of the miners as the dry month
of June is the period for farmers to gather
the wheat crop. The value of "jigging y
was ia great measure determined by the ia
cilities afforded for procuring steady flow
of water in sufficient quantity to wash " the
earth; but now it appears that the old sys-
TEN is to be completely revolutionized, and
that the sluice box and the hydraulic are to be
supplanted by new invented machine known
as the Dry Placer Gold Separator. The des-
cription of this new invention comes from
Santa Fe, New Mexico, where one of the
machines is being operated with astonishing
success. 1t is described as consisting of four
strong posts united 10y two inch rods, Sc
curely bolted and nutted together, upon which
a stout framework of three screens and three
tables rest the latter of which contain eight
rifles each, against which the iron-sand end
gold lodge. The machine is about six feet
long, six feet high, two feet wide, and carries
the three screens lie the upper, and the three
tables in the lower part Of it. The dart is
fed on top of the uppermost and coarsest
screen, and passes thence in turn to the Sec
ond and third screens; and while falling from
the last one to the first table it encounters a
blast of air from sturtevant blower, No. 2,
which is run at the rate of eight hundred
revolutions per minute, by means OF which
the sand, gravel, pebbles and clay are blown
from the machine. The machine has a
longitudinal motion parallel to the earth,
which concentrates the gold in each seventy
five pans of earth into two pans. A practi-
cal test of its working capacity resulted most
satisfactorily to large number of miners
benefactor to placer miners everywhere. The
test was made at the Jicarilla placers, about
one hundred and fifty miles south east from
Santa Fe Its capacity is given at from thirty
to forty tons of earth per day of ten hours,
according to the character of The soil, and it
saves the gold more readily and more thor
oughly than could be done with the old-fash-
ioned rocker. BY this process the soil is not
run off into the beds of streams and carried
to the plains, bat is left where it properly be-
longs, and is even improved in condition.
There are probably thousands of gulches in
California where the machine could be op-
Grated to advantage, and without any danger
of daraging neighbors by running "tail-
ings" on their gardens or farms. The soil of
foothill farms could be put through the ma
chine, the gold extracted, and the land after
wards cropped, the gold-extracting process
rendering tillage by the plow unnecessary for
one season at least. With the machine, it
would doubles pay to work many of the
gulches in the mineral belt of California over
again.