THE MOANATAIRI BATTERY.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1773, 8 September 1874, Page 2

THE MOANATAIRI BATTERY.

I visited'-the Moanatairi battery yesterday and found it fully engaged, the whole forty head of stamps, on stuff from the Company's own mine. The whole* of this most complete plant is in splendid order, and well attended to. I particularly noticed the feeding of the stamper boxes; the manager of the battery, I suppose, insists, on the feeders shovelling the stuff into the stamper boxes so as not to have too much between the false bottom and the stamp shoe. If men employed in batteries only knew the difference there is in high and low feeding the stampers, they would not have so many broken gratings. There is one contrivance in this battery that very much pleased me—it is a perforated trough placed above the drop from the top plate; it does not take the water as it comes from the boxes, but is a kind of supplement; its use is that if sufficient water is in the stamper box, yet not sufficient to keep, the tables clear of sand, this kind of outside supply can be turned on, and the tables kept perfectly clear. In many cases the person attending batieiy tables has found, that the stuff has silted upon them; his only remedy has been to turn more water on into the stamper boxes only to find that, although the purpose he wished to effect has beei accomplished, it has been at the loss of amalgam and mercury. The stream of water as applied on the top plates of the Moanatairi new battery seems in a measure to obviate this, and gives the person in charge more control over the most important part of his work. There is nothing wonderful in the contrivance I have mentioned—it is more like an old idea well applied. When I was in the battery the berdans and buddle were idle, the stuff they wero supposed to treat having been used up. I noticed in this battery, as in most others, that cold water is used for berdan purposes. With all humility I submit this is a great mis* take, warm water, or rather hot water, I have always found to be fifty times better. I will give just a commonplace reason: blankets are placed at the foot of the tables to catch gold that actually is to o much coated with something that pr •" vents its sticking to the plates during its passage from the gratings to the bottom ripple. I have found that hot water most materially assists in either the rubbing off or the amalgamating of these particles of gold with the mercury. I feel vexed when I see so much exhaust steam (I think that is the term) going to no use, when I know it would be so useful if condensed into hot water for the berdans. I first learned this lesson at Weston's battery, at the head of the Waiotahi Creek; the berdan there was supplied with two taps, one with hot and one with cold water. I lost less gold and less silver in that berdan than in any other I have used on the Thames.