# Is there any better smell?



## GotTheBug (Sep 23, 2016)

Entertainment thread...

One of my favorite smells is firing up a new melting dish for seasoning. Not sure why, maybe because I know what its future holds.

Your thoughts?

Paul.


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## Smack (Sep 24, 2016)

Something about the smell of incinerated BGA chips when I mix in Jet Dry with water before it goes in the blue bowl. I think my nose and brain has made an association there.


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## 4metals (Sep 24, 2016)

I remember many years ago in Ecuador waking early in the morning and sitting by one of 3 leaching lagoons where the bitter sweet aroma of a freshly made cyanide leach solution mingled with the morning dew. 

That and Ecuadorian coffee made some memorable mornings.


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## Platdigger (Sep 24, 2016)

Awwww, Ecuador... let's go back 4metals. You lead the way through the bush, ok?


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## Irons (Sep 24, 2016)

I wanna go too.......


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## FrugalRefiner (Sep 24, 2016)

I'm in! When do we leave?

Dave


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## Barren Realms 007 (Sep 24, 2016)

When 4metals said that it made me want to go back to Panama and the bush. Oh the fun I had in the bush.

Ok take your minds out of the gutter. Jungle bush. :lol:


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## 4metals (Sep 25, 2016)

My experiences in Ecuador went from civilized to roughing it. 

The rather civilized work done in Zaruma in the southern part of Ecuador in El Oro Province (that's gold for you gringo's!) There, it was meals in restaurants (some with dirt floors, but tablecloths!) and morning coffee at a table had a permanent location between a triangle formed by 3, 15 meter round cyanide leaching pools. Not a "roughing it" experience by any means. 

Then a month spent in the Oriente, along the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes mountains. There were dense forested slopes and lowland rainforests because it is in the Amazon basin. That was roughing it, doing exploratory dredge work for placer gold. Hard work dredging and moving overburden while working under water literally 4 to 6 hours in a day. What was neat was I quickly learned to bring a pole spear down with me because a fresh fish dinner always showed up before the day was out. Unlike their salt water cousins, fresh-water fish come and look at you while you're spearing them! 

Even though I was younger, I much preferred the 3 months in the civilized region to the month roughing it.


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## FrugalRefiner (Sep 25, 2016)

4metals said:


> What was neat was I quickly learned to bring a pole spear down with me because a fresh fish dinner always showed up before the day was out. Unlike their salt water cousins, fresh-water fish come and look at you while you're spearing them!


When my prospecting buddy and I were running a small 4" dredge, we learned to keep a fishing pole handy. The fishing was often pretty good downstream from the dredge. We assumed that all the stuff we stirred up in the process attracted the bait fish and the bass that fed on them.

Dave


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## anachronism (Sep 25, 2016)

4metals said:


> I remember many years ago in Ecuador waking early in the morning and sitting by one of 3 leaching lagoons where the bitter sweet aroma of a freshly made cyanide leach solution mingled with the morning dew.
> 
> That and Ecuadorian coffee made some memorable mornings.



Why does the image of you sitting shirtless, wearing a cavalry hat, and growling " I love the smell of cyanide in the morning" refuse to leave my mind? :lol:


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## 4metals (Sep 25, 2016)

When I was in Ecuador there were 2 types of permits for placer dredging, one was an exploration permit, the second was an exploitation permit. An exploration permit gave us the ability to sample in many areas without having to file for an actual permit to do production work in that area. Once you found an area you considered worthy of setting up, you had to travel to Quito and enter the lengthy process with the government to acquire an exploitation permit. That usually was made much easier and timely by having an Ecuadorian politician helping you get all of the paperwork right, and that could cost more than you might recover! Some things never change! 

The upper limit for a dredge for exploration use was 6" so that is what we used. It was able to move a lot of material although most of the nuggets we found were not in the riffles of the dredge, they were in the cracks we eventually uncovered in the streambed. When you uncover a crack in the bedrock that is hugging a few nuggets, that have been sitting there for who knows how long, that is quite a sight to see. (it doesn't have any smell that qualifies it for this thread, but it does produce an unforgettable moment!) We found out later (years later) that "flour gold" was being recovered in the sluices but back then, (early '80's) the dredges were,'t set up for the real fine ground placer gold. The dredge clean up did yield black sands which after amalgamation and retort processing did pay off with some gold as well. 

We never applied for an exploitation permit, it was more productive moving around and using the 6" dredge to explore different rivers and streams. By moving around every few days, we got to sample a lot of different fish too!


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## kurtak (Sep 26, 2016)

anachronism said:


> 4metals said:
> 
> 
> > I remember many years ago in Ecuador waking early in the morning and sitting by one of 3 leaching lagoons where the bitter sweet aroma of a freshly made cyanide leach solution mingled with the morning dew.
> ...



:lol: :lol: :lol: Now it wont leave my mind ether 

Kurt


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## kurtak (Sep 26, 2016)

4metals said:


> I remember many years ago in Ecuador waking early in the morning and sitting by one of 3 leaching lagoons where the bitter sweet aroma of a freshly made cyanide leach solution mingled with the morning dew.



Personally I like the smell of (burnt) gun powder - any time of day :lol: 



> The upper limit for a dredge for exploration use was 6" so that is what we used. It was able to move a lot of material although most of the nuggets we found were not in the riffles of the dredge, they were in the cracks we eventually uncovered in the streambed. When you uncover a crack in the bedrock that is hugging a few nuggets, that have been sitting there for who knows how long, that is quite a sight to see.



When I was involved in some placer mining in Northern California it always amazed me how a 6 inch dredge would suck a fist size rock up from several inches away from the nozzle that would get stuck on the end of the nozzle (due to a cross welded on the end to prevent large rocks plugging the hose) but it wouldn't suck a 1/4 ozt (& larger) nugget off the bed rock - hence the name "pickers" :mrgreen: --- love those pickers 8) 

Kurt


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## kurtak (Sep 26, 2016)

Barren Realms 007 said:


> When 4metals said that it made me want to go back to Panama and the bush. Oh the fun I had in the bush.
> 
> Ok take your minds out of the gutter. Jungle bush. :lol:



Per the underlined --- I still like spending time in the bush --- both kinds :twisted: 

Kurt


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## UncleBenBen (Sep 26, 2016)

One of the things I love most about this forum is when the pro's get to posting stories about the good ole days.

I hope y'all never tire of telling these stories because i don't think I could ever get tired of reading them!

Thanks for it all!!

Ben


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## 4metals (Sep 26, 2016)

I am not a sentimental type to sit around and think about the good old days, I am more the "love the smell of cyanide in the morning" type.

But as far as the good old days go, for a precious metal refiner, here and now are the good old days. For example, that mine in Ecuador was producing ore which assayed around 3/4 OPT (ounces per ton). Gold had just shot up to an all time high of $850 an ounce which was totally a reaction to world events evidenced by its decline back to the $400's in the next few years. But think about it, they had to dig it out of the ground, mill it to size, put it in large leach tanks, add the cyanide to leach the gold, decant the liquors and recover the gold from the solution, (which was done in zinc boxes when I got there) clean up the zinc and finally refine the gold. In addition to making for a large run on sentence, it was a lot of work and material to handle for $850 bucks!

Today, the up and coming feedstock is in e-scrap. In almost every case it will exceed the 3/4 OPT yield of the mining ore and it has a bounty of other metals along for the ride. And some disassembly and selling off of metal components, can yield a paycheck before the PM's enter the picture. Back when I was starting out, and for most of my career, there was no internet, or discussion groups where refiners got together and discussed their methods. Either you knew it, or knew how to fill in the pieces from classic text's to make it work. Today we have a forum like this where productive discussions happen and those with the initiative can do things unheard of when I was starting out. 

Yep, here and now are the good old days.


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## Platdigger (Sep 26, 2016)

Perhaps, but I still would like to uncover a few of those nugget huggin fissures like that.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Sep 26, 2016)

I have to agree, Ben..

Some of the best threads on this forum are where our resident pro's are talking with one another. Giving small anecdotes and little pieces of the puzzle that is -their life story. It not only lets us connect with one another, but usually those threads have great information.. Whether they are just stories, or talking of processes, or old feedstocks they had...or even when debating with one another in a productive and progressive way. 

My favorite smell is my morning and evening (snd everywhere in between) coffee and cigarette, because thats when I sit and read these great posts.

And, I dont think Id be much a fan of going down into the bush...too many mosquitoes (maybe even crotch crickets :shock: )


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## goldsilverpro (Sep 26, 2016)

I haven't refined for awhile, but I really miss the smell of aqua regia in the morning. Not enough to gag me but more of that wonderful background AR smell that every gold refiner smells a little bit every moment that he is refining.

And I agree with 4metals about that wonderful freshly made sweet cyanide smell.

I even like the SO2 smell from dropping gold if there's not enough of it to where you can taste it.

Maybe the reason I like these smells is because they all represent money in the works.


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## UncleBenBen (Sep 26, 2016)

Topher-
That's exactly what I meant!

And when bits of wisdom like these are added...



4metals said:


> Yep, here and now are the good old days.



And...



goldsilverpro said:


> Maybe the reason I like these smells is because they all represent money in the works.



It makes these kind of threads even better!


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## Palladium (Jul 20, 2020)

Irons said:


> I wanna go too.......



This was the last post by Irons.
Anybody know what happened to him?


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## mls26cwru (Jul 20, 2020)

Not sure about Irons, but there is nothing better than sniffing the hulls of the old paper base Federal shotgun shells after they have been fired.


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## Johnny5 (Jul 20, 2020)

4metals said:


> I remember many years ago in Ecuador waking early in the morning and sitting by one of 3 leaching lagoons where the bitter sweet aroma of a freshly made cyanide leach solution mingled with the morning dew.
> 
> That and Ecuadorian coffee made some memorable mornings.



I know it sounds strange, but I always loved that smell too. Kind of like sweet almonds, like those candied almonds at the fair.

Oh yeh, the coffee too. Lol


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## butcher (Jul 20, 2020)

I do not know what happened to some of our members like Irons I sure miss his wittiness, Oz, I Miss him too and wonder, many others, the older I get seems the more friends I begin to wonder about or miss.


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