HappyTrails55
Sr. Member
I in the past have found lots of mercury balls with gold in them from the old timers that I just save and save and save but have not done anything with them cause of my fear of mercury. I one time a long time ago had a friend that died from mercury poisioning. He was very knowlegeable about mercury and handling the stuff, yet it still got him. Seems like no one that I know wants to handle this stuff as well, I've thought long and hard about this...when I was a kid in the 60's there was this old timer fella that use to pour his mercury into his pan and slosh it around with the concentrates and then pull it out, then down the road, do it again until he had concentrated enough gold in it, just how he handled it I don't know. I've heard lot's of stories about the old timers separating the mercury heating it up on the stove in there pans and such, alot of them dying and alot of them not using any kind of mercury retort devices. I'm kind of aiming this question at you more knowlegdeable fella's that handle this stuff. For the small time miner fella like myself is it possible to (and kind of safe) if using the proper care to separate the mercury from the gold (silver, etc.), using gloves, a respirator...What if I was to go out and find a safe place, like maybe a deserted campground with my coleman stove, wait for a strong breeze, uphill from the cooking of the merc vapors, respirator & gloves and cook it. I'm in a quandry over this, I've always stayed away from this crap but now I got alot of gold in these balls and I'm trying to figure out how to do this. SAFELY. I've built miller tables and use a variety of other equipment to separate the concentrates, yeah even the Blue Bowl method and stuff that's similiar, but this Mercury has me baffled. So is there any advice from you Professional Feller's? There probably is quite a few other people with this dilemma...No doubt, there's probably alot written about this somewhere but I just can't find it..Thanks, Darrell
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