My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 259 Anyway, it's quite heavy
The group began to move the larger, useless stones one by one into the depths of the mine. After working for more than an hour, all the blasted stones were cleared away.

During this process, the quartz fragments were picked up and bagged.

The quartz vein was only about two feet wide, and there wasn't much ore inside; it only filled a little over two bags.

Li Guozhu searched carefully, even collecting the accumulated fine debris.

The whole process actually took longer, especially drilling the blast holes.

Even so, the gold contained in those two bags of ore was enough to excite everyone and bring them obvious comfort.

Zhou Jingming had previously thought he could produce about ten bags of ore a day, but at the current pace, he would be lucky to produce five or six bags.

Seeing that everyone was doing a good job, he called Bai Zhishun over, carried two bags of ore out of the mine, and returned to the riverbank of the old mine.

The two men poured the ore into two separate mine cart buckets, found a short-handled sledgehammer, jumped into the buckets, and smashed the ore into powder as much as possible.

This was an extremely strenuous task. Every time Zhou Jingming raised the hammer, he thought to himself, "If only I had a stone crusher and a grinding trough."

If you have these things, you can just throw the ore into the crusher. These two bags of ore can be crushed into small particles in minutes. Then, pour the small particles into a circular grinding trough. The cast iron roller driven by the diesel engine will turn the quartz particles into stone powder.

Meanwhile, water was continuously poured into the grinding mill, and most of the stone powder was washed out of the mill with the water flow...

There would be no need to exert as much effort as we are now.

Thinking about these machines, Zhou Jingming felt that he would still have a lot to do next year.

But for now, it's just a thought.

I brought a fine mesh screen with me this time.

Once the ore had been crushed to a near-complete degree, Zhou Jingming first laid an oilcloth over the outside of the mine car bucket. Then, he used a shovel to scoop the stone powder from the bucket into a sieve, sifting the fine powder onto the oilcloth. He picked out the gold that was clearly visible, and continued to put the granular quartz material into the mine car bucket for further crushing.

After crushing most of the ore, he handed the task over to Bai Zhishun, and set up a chute on the riverbank to carry the quartz powder to the river. He first rinsed most of the quartz powder with slow water, and then washed the rest with a gold bucket.

As the golden bucket was shaken, the white stone powder was gradually carried out of the bucket by the cold river water that had been poured into it. Gradually, a layer of golden particles and fluffy gold appeared at the bottom of the golden bucket.

After more than two hours of this process, the gold in the two bags of ore was roughly washed out, and a lot of quartz powder was mixed in with it.

Since he was going to use mercury to bite the gold anyway, Zhou Jingming simply put them in an iron basin for the time being, and would do it again once he had collected more, to avoid any trouble.

Mercury is toxic, so it's best to minimize contact with it.

But it is estimated that these two bags of ore will yield no less than one kilogram of gold.

Unlike at the Haxionggou mine, Zhou Jingming couldn't keep all the gold for himself. According to the rules of the mine, it should be divided equally, but since everyone's contribution was different, Zhou Jingming would still get a larger share.

This matter had been discussed beforehand. Zhou Jingming would take 30% of the gold, and the remaining gold would be divided equally among Peng Yuanchao and the other nine. As for Su Xiulan and the other two women, they would be paid according to the wages Zhou Jingming had paid them at the Haxionggou mine, which would also be borne by the seven of them.

We'll have to wait until the very end to find out exactly how much we can get.

Things went smoothly from then on.

On the evening of the third day, the weather turned gloomy, and a northeasterly wind began to blow.

The first light snow of the year fell in the mountains.

However, this didn't have much impact on the work inside the mine and the physically demanding tasks like shoveling ore. Only the personnel were reassigned.

Bai Zhishun, who was crushing ore with Zhou Jingming, was replaced by Sun Chenggui.

The reason is simple: Bai Zhishun, with his hunchback and short stature, is more suited to drilling into that newly mined, narrow tunnel that extends inward along the quartz vein.

The purpose of this mine is to clean the cave, and since the quartz vein is only about the width of a palm, the mine cannot be opened up too large. Otherwise, most of the time would be spent cleaning up useless rubble.

When others went into that sloping mine shaft, they either bumped their heads or found it difficult to stretch out. But it was different for Bai Zhishun. He could even easily swing his pickaxe to dig.

Because of its remote location, no one has been seen coming for more than ten days. However, it has snowed twice in the mountains, and many mountain peaks have turned white.

The mine shaft had been extending at a rate of three to four meters per day during these days of digging. On the last day, Gao Jianjun, who had just been in the mine with a group of people carrying explosives for more than an hour, came to find Zhou Jingming.

Zhou Jingming followed him into the mine and could only conclude that the quartz vein had been completely mined out.

Gao Jianjun's final blast today blew through the tunnel and the old mine shaft. Moreover, the quartz vein became narrower and shorter as you went further in. It is probably for this reason that the people who opened the mine did not pay attention to this small vein.

“If it’s gone, it’s gone… We’ve been working for more than ten days straight, and it’s almost mid-October. Everyone has worked hard these past few days. Let’s take a break for a couple of days after we’ve finished collecting everything. We can also refine the gold we’ve collected and share it among ourselves. Then we can have a good meal to catch our breath. There’s still more work to be done.”

After all these days, the group of men had been struggling in the cramped tunnel, and they were all covered in mud and looking quite tired.

High-intensity work always requires proper relaxation.

Everyone readily agreed, moved aside the rubble that had been blasted out, and selected out the gold-bearing quartzite, managing to collect just over one bagful.

Back at the camp, Peng Yuanchao, Li Guozhu, and others took over the task of crushing the ore, while Zhou Jingming found an iron basin, put the mixture of gold and quartz powder collected over the past few days into the basin, added some water and a lot of mercury, and had Wang Dong, Sun Chenggui, and the others take turns stirring and grinding it.

In addition, Zhou Jingming also put the gold particles and flakes that were picked out during the crushing of the ore into the mercury to be bitten, because there was still a lot of slag that was difficult to clean out.

The main problem is that it's too cold. You can't grind for very long before your hands get too cold, and you have to warm them by the fire to warm them up.

The matter dragged on until the afternoon, and Peng Yuanchao and his team had also washed out the pulverized quartz powder and processed it with mercury.

Zhou Jingming had his men carry the basin to the riverbank and continue to wash away the excess stone powder with water, until only the bottom of the basin was covered with something that was shimmering with mercury.

He first collected the excess mercury into a plastic bucket. He then wrapped the silvery paste-like substance in the basin with gauze and squeezed out the excess mercury by stirring it tightly, leaving only small spheres.

To make distribution easier, Zhou Jingming didn't make these gold amalgams very large.

After he finished, he started another fire outside, put the iron pot on it, and heated the small round balls.

He no longer cares about the mercury in the amalgam; he simply evaporates it using high temperatures.

This was the result of their hard work over the past few days. Even though Zhou Jingming told them that the mercury vapor was poisonous, they still couldn't help but go over to take a look from time to time.

In the end, Zhou Jingming collected the cooled gold nuggets.

Everyone crowded around, and Gao Jianjun couldn't help but ask, "Brother Zhou, approximately how much is there?"

Zhou Jingming picked up the bag and weighed it in his hand: "How would I know how much there is? Anyway, it's quite heavy."

Peng Yuanchao urged, "Weigh it quickly!"

(End of this chapter)