IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR CRUSHING AURIFEROUS QUARTZ AND AMALGAMATING THE GOLD THEREFROM
Year: 1853

page_text: I, JEAN CONRAD STIFFEL, of 31, Poultry, City, Merchant, do hereby
declare that the nature of the Invention for IMPROVEMENTS IN
MACHINERY FOR CRUSHING AURIFEROUS QUARTZ AND AMALGAMATING THE
GOLD THEREFROM" to be as follows:-
The pulverizer and amalgamator consists of a cast-iron basin. The
periphery of the basin turns up in a circle of twenty-four inches. This
basin is secured to a wrought-iron shaft, which stands at an angle of
about twenty-five degrees from a perpendicular line, compelling the

page_text: basin to revolve in a tilted or inclined position, keeping one side about
twenty inches lower than the other. This basin surmounts a conical or
funnel-shaped cast-iron furnace, the smallest and lower end resting on
a collar on the shaft near the step. In the lower side of the basin is
placed a cast-iron ball, twenty-four inches in diameter, weighing two
thousand pounds. This basin is revolved, with the shaft and furnace,
in the inclined position, by applying the power by gearing, which is
cast on the under side of the basin. When the basin commences to
rotate, the ball revolves by. its own gravity,, constantly remaining at the
lowest point in the basin; the ball just fitting the basin produces a
grinding effect (from the fact that the ball has a double motion,
a rolling and spiral motion, which crushes and grinds at the same
time). The quicksilver is placed in the inclined basin, and is com-
pelled to keep at the "crushing point of the ball, and is kept partially
warmed by the furnace underneath the basin to increase its affinity
for the gold. The ore is first-broken-up-to-about the size of shot by
stampers, which are in a separate frame, and placed on a slight eleva-
tion above the basin so as to-use spouts to conduct the ore and water in
the basin. The ball pulverizes the ore to an impalpable powder at the
bottom of the mercury, thus bringing, every particle of gold in contact
with the pure and warm quicksilver, and is amalgamated as soon as it
is freed from the quartz, while the earthy matter, when sufficiently
pulverized, rises in the water by the agitation of the water by the ball,
and passes off as a sediment through openings in the sides of the basin
near the top. The double motion, the crushing and grinding move-
ment of the ball, are obtained by exceedingly simple and ingenious
means. The latter is secured by a spiral effect given to the motion of
the ball as it rolls in the basin by means of attaching a fixed point in
the ball by a rotating pivot turning in a sleeve which revolves on the
end line shaft which supports the basin, so that while the ball rolls
down the inclined basin constantly presented to it by the revolving
basin by its own gravity, the inner side of the ball is held back and
the outer side forced to move round upon a centre of motion, which
is the same as the centre of the grinding surface of the ball in the

page_text: basin. The first can be changed to four different points, so as to keep
the ball always round one fourth of the surface of the ball filling
the basin, while the ball makes two revolutions; in its rolling motion
it makes one spirally, the basin fitting the hall upon twenty inches
circumference.