Washing

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Overall arrangement of a laundry

The ore washing was used for cleaning and processing as a preliminary stage for smelting the ore obtained .

In old pits that did not yet have any machine-operated processing, the ore was separated from the mountain , i.e. the inferior rubble, in a rocker box . An iron bucket was hung over a bricked pit filled with water and was rocked up and down by the workers sitting on a long lever , whereby the ore poured onto a vertically movable sieve was roughly pre-cleaned.

Later, the steam-powered type case, which worked similarly on the principle of water displacement , was used . Of these, 4 machines were set up one behind the other on the laundry. After they had passed the noisy stone crusher, the ore chunks were sorted according to size in a drum equipped with various hole dimensions; the largest landed in the stamp mill to be crushed on a solid iron base. Another important machine was the table , a slowly rotating plate ( similar to a potter's wheel ) about 2.5 m in diameter. Above this, cloths were attached to a crossbar made of beams or pipes, which were to be kept constantly wet by sprinkling pipes. The coarse cloths freed the ores of dirt and mud by constant wiping and grinding. Unusable pieces were picked out by nimble hands, mostly by reading boys or women. What fell from the table wandered in the walled ditch with the sluggishly flowing turbidity towards the mud pond , while useful items were still picked up along the way.

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