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Kaiser Sees Bright Future for Jamaica Kaiser Aluminum Co. has a big stake in the British West Indies, the Island of Jamaica in particular. There, Kaiser is busy developing one of the most promising bauxite finds in recent years. The $12 million operation was officially opened in February. Facilities have a rating of an annual capacity of 2 million tons and will supply Kaiser plants with ore for years. The ore comes across the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi to stockpiles at Baton Rouge. The stockpile at Baton Rouge would throw many an old river boat skipper for a loss. Where no mountain once existed now stands a man-made bluff of bauxite, known as Bauxite Peak.

Jan 6, 1953

Expect Labrador Iron Ore Shipments by 1954 Iron ore shipments from the Quebec-Labrador area are a "definite expectation" by late summer, 1954, according to William H. Durrell, general manager of the Iron Ore Company of Canada. About $120 million have been invested in the project, with a total of $200 million expected to be reached before a ton of ore is shipped, Mr. Durrell said. According to the general manager approximately 418 million tons of open pit highgrade ore have been proven in the project. Deposits lie several hundred miles north of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in territory which was without transportation of any kind. Construction of a railroad from Seven Islands to Knob Lake, about 360 miles, is an important part of the development plan. The railroad will be the first to adopt complete roller bearing applications. Construction is on schedule with 215 miles of the route graded. Completion involves two tunnels through rock, one of almost half mile length, a 700-ft bridge and several smaller spans.

Jan 3, 1953

Low Zinc Prices Close Alcoa Mine Alcoa Mining Co., announced that it will suspend operations at its Hutson mine, near Salem, Ky., because of low zinc prices, January 15. The Aluminum Co. of America subsidiary announced that the low market has made zinc mining un- profitable. About 70 men were employed at the mine, with a production of about 5000 tons of zinc annually. Alcoa said the shutdown would not affect other company operations, with most of the men at Hutson absorbed in the mining firm's fluorspar operations in the same area.

Jan 2, 1953

Flexibility is the keynote in designing modern exploration drills that and mobility. Add to the flexibility of individual drills the wide range of models, and the man looking for a drill has ample choice today. Weight? Choose from models as light as 50 lb or as heavy as 10,000 lb. Hole capacity? From less than 1 in. for smallest core drills to 20 in. or more for auger types. Transportation? The lightest go by packsack (in fact, that is one trade name) ; others are designed to go by Jeep, truck, on skids or are built on light trailers. Power? Select air power, gasoline or diesel engine, electric motor, or use a power take-off from the vehicle on which the drill is mounted. Drill bits offer almost as much variety as the drilling machines themselves. Many drills are suitable for a variety of uses, and often adapt to several types of bits with ease. Some of the types available are: diamond core, diamond reaming, rotary, auger, shot, and special soil sampling tools.

Oct 1, 1955

Open pit operators have found the dropball crane a great aid in cutting costs and hazards of secondary breakage. But a common problem in using the unit has been with the shock absorbing connection from the cable to the dropball itself. Blair Limestone Div. of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. has come up with a new connector to solve this problem and to save the time usually lost in frequent replacement of the cable slings, chains, or old tires hitherto used at this point. J&L personnel solved the problem by combining three ideas from other dropball crane owners. Their unit consists of two long U-bolts running through a heavy spring originally made for use on a vibrating screen. Heavy duty swivels attached to the bent ends of the U-bolts provide attachment points for the crane cable and the special chain to the dropball. Connection at the dropball is by an eyelet welded directly into the mass of steel, and a special alloy chain is connected to this with a clevis.

Nov 1, 1955

Reducing Fusion: The impure or low grade uranium concentrate is mixed with a formulated flux of sodium carbonate, salt, and sawdust or fuel oil and heated, while being stirred, to about 950°C. This reduces the uranium to the black, water insoluble uranium dioxide and with the exception of nonamphoteric metals forms water soluble sodium salts of the vanadium, alumina, silica, phosphates, and other constituents of the cake. The cooled melt is then water leached, leaving a residue of black insoluble uranium dioxide. "Green Sludge" Digestion and Liquor Purification: The green sludge is redissolved in acid, and by selective precipitation involving pH adjustments and a final neutralization

Jun 1, 1956

By W. A. Boyer, A. W. Beck

At the Morning mine of American Smelting & Refining Co. it was particularly important that there be a means of signaling the engineer from the moving cage in the shaft. Because of the shifting ground in which the shaft was located, buckling timber made it extremely difficult to keep a continuous bell line serviceable. In 1930 engineers considered a moving contact pantograph arrangement between the cage and two stationary messenger wires strung on insulators in the shaft compartment next to the cage. The idea was abandoned because falling material in the shaft and speed of hoisting made it difficult to maintain communication. Later in 1934 a manufacturing company was consulted about the use of an electric eye or a radio signal. As the shaft was located in a return air stream of nearly 100 pct relative humidity, there was too much fog for the electric eye to be used. The radio signal was considered, and it was believed feasible to generate electric static on the cage, locating a radio receiver at the top of the shaft, but the manufacturing company's research department was too busy to work on it at that time.

Sep 1, 1955

By R. U. Jackson

Belt conveying is a method of transportation that requires proper servicing and maintenance if completely economical results are to be obtained from the system. With a trucking system, it is common practice to deliver the trucks to a servicing station each day or at the end of each shift. With railroad transportation there is a similar procedure. Sufficient credit is seldom given to this periodic inspection and maintenance procedure, yet it is the key to the successful operation of trucking and rail haulage systems. How about the belt conveyor transportation system? Here is a system that requires no operator for each individual unit. It requires only a main switch and an adequate sequence interlocking system, and the system is so simple to operate that maintenance is considered as only a casual requirement-nothing is done about it until after trouble has developed.

Jan 1, 1956

By O. W. Walvoord

To those working in the mineral industry, the flowsheet is a familiar and valuable tool, seldom used, unfortunately, to its fullest advantage. As with so many other commonplace and simple items, there is little or no attempt to expand on the forms, and types of flowsheets. A flowsheet or flow diagram may be defined as an illustration showing circulation of the ore stream in a concentrating plant. It may be further described as an explanatory graphic design or picture. A flowsheet is obtained by interpreting the metallurgists' research and ore test data, usually with some adjustments to suit the economies of the project. It brings together, in compact form, information from a number of sources.

Oct 1, 1956

By W. H. Reck

Increasing use of flotation in modern beneficiation has resulted in a variety of froth handling methods. Froth must be handled mechanically to maintain common floor elevation, because pure gravity flow, stage to stage, makes for multiple level machine installations with higher first cost and less convenient operation. Bucket Elevator--Froth is collected by launder and goes to the feed entry of the elevator, below the floor. The bucket goes to the next treatment stage by gravity flow. The outstanding advantage is high efficiency of conveyance.

Jan 5, 1955

By L. A. Wright, J. F. Emerson

The Pine Creek mine, owned by Union Carbide Nuclear Co., Div. of Union Carbide and Carbon Corp., is one of the world's largest producers of tungsten. The mine is located on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about 25 miles north- west of Bishop, Calif. Prior to 1948, production from the property came either from surface pits or from underground workings above A level haulage tunnel. The tunnel is at an elevation of 10,900 ft, which left 500 to 600 ft of vertical backs to the surface outcrops. Heavy production demands during World War II hastened the planning for long range development of orebodies below A level. A 7000-ft haulage tunnel, 1500 ft below A level, was started in 1943 and completed in early 1947. This haulage tunnel is at an elevation of 9400 ft and is known as Zero tunnel.

Apr 1, 1956

By A. N. Winsor

Increased use of private aircraft in civil engineering, mining, forestry, and other land-use activities creates an opportunity for amateur aerial photography. Taking a photograph having less than 5° tilt requires precision equipment and skilled personnel, while controlled horizontal photography is primarily a terrestrial method that has passed to the limbo of forgotten things. But the remaining possibility – oblique aerial photography – can be…

Jan 2, 1955

By R. L. Tobie

Handling and storing ore at transfer points underground are encountered frequently. An ideal solution to these troubles is probably still to be found, but at the Mather mine "B" shaft a method incorporating scraping trenches has been developed giving better service, from the standpoint of safety and simplicity, than obtained from other schemes. When shaft pockets are used for storage, the size of the ground opening required to assure capacity is often prohibitive, and shaft depth below the last level can become excessive, particularly if a crushing station is used. Also, if the material being handled contains large amounts of wet fines, it is difficult, if not impossible, to hold the material with regular chute gates. In order to remedy these problems Cleveland-Cliffs' Mather "B" has utilized three types of trenches. Types I and I1 are now in service and the third is under construction.

Jan 4, 1955

By Frank J. Windolph

Grinding Practice-These tests were run in the 9 ft diam by 8 ft long grate discharge ball mills at Climax. Each mill functions in closed circuit with a 78 in. Akins duplex high-weir classifier, and a circulating load of 300 pct is maintained. The size of the mill feed is 6 pct on 3/8ths, which is ground to pass 28 mesh. Testing Methods-Each grinding section is equipped with a conveyor scale on the ball mill feeder belt, a watt-hour meter on the ball mill motor, and an automatic sampler for the ground product. These instruments are exceptionally valuable to the mill testing program.

Aug 1, 1956

Long pipelines handling suspended solids find wide use throughout the mining industry. In phosphate, iron ore, and clay mining; in hydraulic stripping of overburden; in tailing disposal; and in transferring concentrates between plants pipeline transport may prove cheapest material handling method. One drawback is necessity for providing attendance at booster stations, both for control and for protection of pumping equipment from sudden surges and failures. Thiele Kaolin Co. in Georgia has come up with an installation where instrumentation does this job automatically, efficiently, and economically.

Jun 1, 1955

The old single-jack may have been portable- but it left much to be desired in drilling speed and depth of hole. Portable compressors for drilling can be snaked into tough spots. However, that calls for more men, equipment, and money, with corresponding loss of mobility. The drills listed in this notebook sheet meet three requirements: They are light. They are self-powered. And all are reported proven in practice. Undoubtedly there are other units filling the requirements that are not listed. Extreme mobility for far-flung exploration teams is always an acute need. The drills listed here help solve the problem. Canadian Longyear, for instance, reports that the Porta drill has been parachuted into wilderness spots and helicopters have lofted light core drills onto mesa tops in the Colorado Plateau uranium country.

Jul 1, 1955

By E. G. Williams

Conveyors were first used underground at Miami Copper Co., in the latter part of 1947. At that time some of the stoping area was too heavy and too close to the haulage level to use conventional haulage. To get the haulage drifts out from under the stoping area belt conveyors were used for the additional lateral transfer. Since 1947 more than 8 million tons have been mined in this manner, with as many as four belt type stopes in production at one time. When the mining plan for the new low grade was worked out, it was decided to use belts on what otherwise would have been short train haulage transfers to move the ore laterally to centrally located concrete ore passes. One group of these stopes has grizzly levels on the 570, with a belt level on the 670; the other group has grizzly levels on the 720 and belt levels on the 820, with the concrete ore passes bottoming on the 1000, or the existing train haulage level.

Jul 1, 1956

* Kennecott Copper Corp. gets Charles R. Cox as president on Jan. 1. Mr. Cox is resigning his position as president of Carnegie-Illinois to take the new post with Kennecott, left vacant by the death of Mr. Stannard in September. •The ECA signed a contract in December to advance X3,600,000 to Newmont Mining Corp. to aid development of lead and zinc mines in French Morocco. The funds are to be repaid in lead and zinc for the United States' stockpile over a period of seven years. The mines are owned by the Societe des Mines de Zellidja, with which organization Newmont is associated. • Under the direction of John M. Brooks, Jr., general manager, the Matahambra mine in Cuba, will probably produce sufficient tonnage to make 4 million lb of copper per month during 1950. The grade is presently running between 7 and 10 pet. •S. H. Ash reports that the fatality rate per million-man-hr for the anthracite industry for 1949, through November, is 0.78. This is 15 pct better than that achieved during 1948, which was the lowest fatal injury rate in coal mining history. The first full year on record without a major disaster was recorded in 1949 (p. 34). •The Atomic Energy Commission has authorized the production of 200 lb of uranium metal for use under AEC license in non-Commission research projects. •A national survey of projected 1950 purchases of new machine tools, machine tool accessories, materials handling equipment, etc., just completed by the American Society of Tool Engineers reveals that, of the companies reporting, 80 pct state that they plan to buy either more equipment or the same amount as in 1948. • Armour Research Foundation is conducting investigations for the use of clay and shale deposits to make lightweight aggregates. The material is heated until it expands and forms material suitable for mixing with cement which it is hoped will be lighter, stronger, have better insulating qualities and will lower the cost of concrete. •In the first six months of 1949 the bituminous coal miners' average hourly earnings were $1.94 -as compared with X1.392_ national average for all manufacturing. Average annual earnings of full-time employees in the bituminous coal mines in 1948 were $3387 as compared with $2809 for all industry. •LaSalle Business Bulletin reports: "year ends on a rising trend in industry and trade ... nearly record-breaking demand from almost all sources keeps business high... most indicators but little below postwar peak... forces keeping activity high arestill powerful--changes in general business conditions likely to be slow and moderate." •Office of Internal Trade of the Commerce Department requests that technical data significant to the national security which is to be sent outside of the United States be submitted to it for an official opinion on the desirability of transmitting such information. This voluntary compliance program is part of our national security control. • Blast furnace slag reduced to 12 to 16 mesh is being used for sanding track at the Mont Coal mines of Armco. The slag replaces silica sand which caused silicosis. It has proved so effective and cheap that tests are being made to use the slag for rock dusting.

Jan 1, 1950

Climax Molybdenum Co. has contracted with the Government to operate its property at Climax, Colo. at maximum capacity for five years. Substitution of synthetic lubricants, polyalkylene glycols and their derivatives, for petroleum products in certain industrial applications is yielding substantial savings in production costs and improved operation of mechanical equipment.

Jan 1, 1951

This month, Foote Mineral Co. will start to commercially recover tin in the area of Kings Mountain, North Carolina. For 50 years there have been intermittant efforts to recover it but it has finally become economic as a by-product in the mining and concentrating of the associated lithium ore. An unusual deposit of a nonmetallic mineral which is high in sericite, low in quartzite, and similar in physical characteristics to pinite, has been discovered by the Summit Mining Corp. in Adams County, Pa. Work is in progress to determine its suitability for ceramics, fillers, and extenders for insecticides.

Jan 10, 1951