April 08, 2022
Gold Milling and Concentration
Nuggets taken from streams and free gold retrieved by panning, sluicing and dredging could go directly to the smelter. Before the gold found in the ore taken from hard rock mines became gold ingots or gold coins, it went several complicated rounds of chemical and mechanical processing. Men and machines at mills worked together to pulverize and break down the ore, discard the waste rock and prepare the concentrated ore for further processing.