[SEL] what is it? OT

[Rob Skinner]

> Enlightening knowledge but, I still am as ignorant about its 
> function as I was before!!

Assuming the amalgamation is in regards to the recovery of precious metal using
mercury, it was a common practice in the old days, but I've never seen tools to
do it on a small scale.  

The process depends on a characteristic of mercury that makes it combine with
other metals.

In some large scale operations for milling gold, ore goes through a stamp mill.
Water washes the powdered ore down over an amalgamation table.  It's a big flat
sheet, sometimes galvanized steel with strips of wood or copper riffles crossing
it.  Mercury covers the amalgamation table.  As the slurry of powdered gold ore
washes over the table, the gold particles combine with the mercury.     

Eventually the mercury/gold amalgam is removed from the table.   It is placed in
a vessel, heated, and the mercury boils off, leaving the gold.  

Eventually the process was replaced with the use of cyanide, which is more
efficient.  I don't know the dates of changeover, but mercury amalgamation was
used in the mid to late 1800's in this area.  By the time of WW2 when many of
our mines were shut down, cyanide was being used.  

Rob