The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-04-01

For every bar which is in the vaults of
the mint at Philadelphia there is a record
on the books of the superintendent. That
record shows the weight and fineness of
the bar. Many of the bars on storage
were bought in 1890, when the Sherman
law first went into effect They have re-
manned untouched from the time when
the stamp of the assayer was put on
them. Now they will be taken out and
melted with copper to form an alloy
The exact proportion of silver to copper,
as l have said, should be nine to one, but
in the melting little less than the meas
ure of copper is used, 50 that, by adding
copper later in small quantities, the alloy
can be made as nearly as possible of the
exact standard. 1t is easier to work the
alloy down by adding copper than it is to
work it up by adding silver.
The copper and the bar silver are put
in the crucible together. The crucible
used for melting silver is of hand wrought
iron. These pots cost S45 each. Each of
them will hold about 1000 ounces at a
time Each pot is good for $50 melts 1t
viii cost the mint about $500 for cruel
bles to melt the AZ, 900 ounces of silver.
Gold is melted in black lead pot, which
costs about tenth as much as the iron
pot, but the black lead pot is good for
only about thirteen melts. No silver
passes through the iron crusible. A lit
tie is absorbed by it and this is recovered
when the crucible is melted after it has
seen the last of its usefulness Nothing
that could yield any Of the waste silver is
allowed to get away from the mint with
out chemical treatment to extract the
precious metal The melting pots, the
slaCs, the ashes from the furnaces and
even the outside pickings from the black
Innings Of the furnaces are ground and
sifted to obtain metallic grains, and these
sleeves is put into a sweep machine, which
extracts the smaller particles. And the
very minute particles of metal pass in
the water of the sweep machine to set
Ting watts and wells. These wells are
cleaned out at very long intervals and
they always yield little gold and silver
The assayer takes from the crucible
both top and bottom samples of the melt.
If il is of standard tineuess the ingots are
passed to the rolling room. The reason
the assaYer takes his samples from the
molten metal. as / have said, is because
the silver alloy is very liable to segrega-
tiOn-that is, partial separation Of the
silver from the cOpper-while cooling An
ingot has been known 10 vary from $50 to
923 fine, and still to average 800 fine.
When an ingot passes the assayer it is
taken TO the rolling room, each melt being
separate. In the rolling room the ingots
are passed through graduated sets of
rolls, which reduce them to long strips of
about the thickness of the silver dollar
When the ingot has gone through the rolls
nine times it is annealed in an open wood
furnace. This annealing process takes
about fifteen minutes. After the anneal-
ing the strips are passed through the rolls
four or five times more, and then are
taken TO the draw-benCh 70 be a little
further reduced in thickness. Before they
are drawn on the draw bench they are
creased with tallow The first few strips
put between the draw-plates are tested.
A few planchets or blanks are cut from
them and weighed. il they need further