Have Silver Deposit:How to extract?

[davebrigg]

I have need of a processing/extraction education:lead silver,iron manganese silver and some native silver on property. Lead silver appears to carry highest grade. Are there options to shipping to a Canadian lead smelter. Apart from university libraries, are there some old timers still around?

[David Hughes]

Get thee to Amazon or equivalent, and go purchase or library "Western Mining", by Otis Young, I believe it was printed by one of the Arizona universities. Speaking as a geologist, this is one of the most informative and readable non technical books on old methods (that form the basis for the modern methods) around, as well as the mining history of the western US, including the Arizona deposits.

A polygot mineral assembleage (as you appear to be describing) is real difficult to smelt/extract. If I was you, I would figure out what I have (mineralogy), assay it to determine potential extraction (not assay only the cherry-picked ore samples, but a representative sampling), and decide if you really want to go there. Most modern mining companies want to deal with large volumes of ore. The one-man mine still exists, but they are rare, and most operators have a tradition of working in these mines (i.e., a body of knowledge dating back to the old days).

If you were to try to operate it on your own, you will probably mine the ore and concentrate the values, and ship the concentrate for recovery. There are smelters/extractors in Nevada and Utah, shipping to Canada will probably kill you.

Your mileage may vary . . . .

David Hughes, a geologist from the Mother Lode country of California and 4th generation local, grandfather was a gold miner, working as an engineering geologist, not as a mining geologist . . . .