The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1920-08-20
THE. RARslT
MAGNETIC PLANT.
THE WORK BEING DONE AT THE
RISING CITY SOUTH
OF HERE.


Mesaba Iron Company at Rabbit
Mimi, will be begun about August
Is, says Skillings Mining Review.
Four hundred men are employed by
the company at Babbitt, and the
immediate vicinity, in the extensive
preparations necessary to whip this
new and important iron mining en-
terprise into shape for production.
The company will enter the shipping
list with its product at the opening of
navigation next spring. This initial
unit has an estimated capacity for
treating 5000 tons of ore per day,
but it will occasion no surprise if
mills of Jackling mining enterprises
usually do over-run scheduled capa-
city.
The mill is being built on the North
side of one of the elevations in the
immediate vicinity of the townsite,
and where every advantage can be
taken of natural conditions for rail-
read grades and the fullest applica-
ton of the principle of gravity. to be
applied to, the operation of the, plant.
The size of the new mill will be
1 total length 1850 feet and width
$50 feet. The plant consists OF five
sections laid out to give continuous
process.
The view from this neighborhood
is one worth going far to see. With a
good glass one may see Ely and
Tower and the smoke, at the mines
is discernible to the naked eye in
clear weather. Looking in this
direction one may see quite clearly
for 20. and 80 miles. Rabbit is about
1925 feet above the sea level and
about 1923 feet above Lake Superior.
From another nearby point one may
look to an equal distance, or even
greater distance, to the West and
South.
To the North, toward Ely, one
looks down upon Birch Lake, but
short distance away. 1t is a narrow
lake, about Is miles long by from one
fourth to one mile in width. Bob
SCOTS ranch looms like huge gar
den in this great rugged territory to
the North.
But to return to the new mill that
is being erected out. there in the wild
erness of the Eastern Mesabi. The
Minneapolis Steel Machinery COM,
pany has the contract for the steel.
While people are vastly interested.
in the fact that the Mesabi Iron
Company is spending about three
million dollars on the Eastern Mesabi
the real basis of this interest lies
in the fact that the expenditure is
being made to establish on broad
commercial basis an advanced prin-
ciple in magnetic separation.
Magnetic separation is the prin-
ciple upon which. this costly, develop
ment is. founded, and this company
has produced separators that are ex-
pected to do their work more effic-
iently than any. others heretofore
built. The modus operandi is as fol-
lows: Mine, crush, grind to powder
and separate the ore from the rock
and form the concentrate into clinker
by the sintering process, for blast
furnace use. The final clinker will be
very high grade iron ore, free from
sulphur or titanium and dust, and so
porous as to make channels through
which the gases of the furnace pass
with ease. There are billions of tons
OF low grade magnetic iron ore, or ta-
conite, on the Eastern Mesabi. The
Mesabi Iron company alone controls,
or owns outright, many. hundreds of
millions of tons itself in the twenty
square miles that it has taken over.
There is little or no overburden to
contend with, reducing the problem
OF mining to one of plain quarrying.
In the large holdings of the Mesabi
Iron company is one square mile up
on which the magnetic ore forms the
clean unbroken surface. The deep
est overburden anywhere on the 20
square miles is nine feet, and the
average cannot exceed two or three
feet.
Granite boulders dot the surface in
all directions. But these naughty obs
tacies to progress and development
do not present such q problem as one
might imagine. When it is necessary
to clear one area of these souvenirs
of the glaciers the portable compress
or runs up to them one by one. Holes
are quickly drilled and "a charge is
placed suited. 1.-THE size of the bould-
er. There is an explosion and the obs
tacle has been reduced to economical
handling.
While on the subject of the port
able compressor, it is a good time to |
speak OF the new wagon road that the /
Mesabi Iron Company is building
from Mesabi station, on the Iron
Range mainline to Rabbit, distance
OF is miles. st. Louis county approp-
rated 10000 for this work and later
decided to turn the money o ,er to The
IRON company to spend, and that ap-
pears'to have been wise move. The
county would not have been as well
prepared to get as much FOR the mon
ey as this company. Nor would the
average road contractor have been
able to do as much for the sum avail
able, The Mesabi Iron Company
picked up the old Syndicate trail