A
Anonymous
Guest
21 January 2009
Greetings from the California Desert...
I’m Dr Glazo… Also known as Allen Steiner… I reside in Lancaster, (north) Los Angeles County, California… That’s in the Antelope Valley, which is the westernmost part of the Mojave Desert… If you are familiar with gold mining history of Southern California, I live about 15 miles southeast of the Tropico mine of Rosamond, (Kern County), first explored by Ezra Hamilton in 1898 when antelope still roamed these parts…
Ezra, a foreman in a tile manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, kept a gold pan handy to check out the metal content of clays that were used in his plant… He found a few flakes of gold in a batch of white kaolin (clay) that came from the north side of Tropico Hill, so he traveled out (by train and horse) to investigate… On his 3rd or 4th trip, (persistence), he discovered a lode deposit, filed a claim and began mining… According to one historian, in 1902 the gold vein yielded $115,000 per ton… At the going rate of $16.00 per ounce that’s about seven thousand ounces of gold per ton of rock…
The Tropico mine is located on a fault that parallels the Garlock fault… At the west end of the Antelope Valley, the Garlock dissects the well known San Andreas fault near Gorman, (Interstate 5 on the Grapevine)… Traveling northeast along the base of the Tehachapi Mountains through Mojave and California City, one comes to the ghost town of Garlock, known for one of California’s largest gold nuggets, (I think Knott’s Berry farm has a replica… It’s about 3 feet long…) The Garlock fault produced an earthquake in the late 1870s of an estimated 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude on Richter’s scale… A few miles west of Garlock, is the Randsburg/Johannesburg mining district… (Remember, this is California, not South Africa)… Randsburg and Mojave still have active gold mines...
I acquired the nickname, Glazo, while studying ceramics at our local community college because of the colorful blends of glazes I developed for my pottery… I opened my first pottery shop in 1972, manufacturing stoneware produced on the potter’s wheel… Ceramic glazes utilize metal oxides for color… Cobalt oxide yields dark blue, iron oxide /rust red, chrome oxide / forest green, nickel oxide / chocolate brown, copper carbonate/turquoise green, et cetera… When copper carbonate is fired in a reducing atmosphere – (obtained by closing the flue damper of a natural gas kiln just enough to cause un-combusted carbon monoxide to linger in the kiln) – the carbon monoxide takes an oxygen molecule from the green copper carbonate, yielding carbon dioxide that escapes through the flue, while copper oxide, an outstanding blood red remains suspended in the glaze... Copper red reduction glazes are the most difficult to attain by studio potters because the reduction must be done between 1400 and 1800 degrees (F), just before the glaze begins to vitrify… If the reduction is done before 1400*F, the carbon monoxide permeates the clay body making it susceptible to thermal shock, not good if one makes casseroles for baking food because a casserole full of baked beans might suddenly crack in half when it reaches 300-400 degrees in a conventional oven, spilling the beans all over the oven… If the reduction is done after the glaze fluxes (vitrifies), the carbon monoxide can’t permeate the glaze so the copper remains turquoise green…
After some 35 years in the pottery business having produced and sold about 70,000 pots, I feel qualified to add the moniker Dr. before my nickname, Glazo… I taught my craft at a community college in Arizona for about five years, but I haven’t earned a so-called “doctorate” from a “university”… I also worked for about a year as a kiln operator for Rockwell International – Space Division in Palmdale, CA, where our nation’s Space Shuttle fleet was assembled… Our shop produced the insulating tile that keeps the orbiters from burning up on re-entry… I won’t bore you with the politics of the space race…
I’ve built or modified each kiln used in my ceramics business, from my first free standing 18 cubic foot catenary arch (parabolic arch), made from natural gas guzzling hard refractory, to my 36 cu/ft production kiln, a 5’x5’x6’ steel heat treating furnace lined with 4.5 inch silica water well filters with a 2” inner hot face of 2400*F Kaowool (trademark) ceramic fiber blanket, (the same material used to insulate the space shuttle’s cargo bay doors)… Hard refractory brick absorbs 27 times as much heat as fiber blanket… In 1977, my 20 cu/ft hard brick kiln in Colorado used 70 gallons of propane for a 2350* glaze firing as opposed to 16 gallons to reach 2280* in my 36 cu/ft Kaowool fiber lined kiln…
I’ve made a reasonably good living as a sole proprietor in the ceramics business… Considering my knowledge and experience working with kilns, clay and glaze materials, combined with living in an area with a rich gold mining history, the investigation of precious metal refining technology is a natural progression of my career… So this year, 2009, I’ve decided to fulfill my ambition of pouring my own 24 karat gold bullion… In 2006, I studied a textbook on fire assay written in the mid-1940s, (I’ll provide the author and title when I retrieve the book from a friend)… This month (January 2009) I built and test fired a very small smelting furnace that holds four 12 ounce (water volume) assay crucibles… I reached 2400*F in the latest firing, melting some silver and gold bearing concentrate I obtained 10 years ago from the site of a local metal recovery operation that was abandoned in the late 1980s… Unfortunately, the concentrates are laced with much iron… But I just like to melt stuff at high temperatures…
Needless to say, I have many 5 gallon buckets of gold and silver bearing sands and rock I’ve accumulated in my travels throughout California… So it’s time to finish some of this stuff… California is truly the Golden State… So much for my introduction to your forum… I reached the site after stumbling upon the book by Hoke, which is the driving force behind my current quest… I hope my lengthy dissertation is accepted by all the members… I like to write, if you hadn’t noticed…!!! Most importantly, I enjoy learning and teaching…
One more item of interest… While exploring an abandoned mill site about 12 years ago, a friend and I discovered a 55 gallon drum that contained a sizable quantity of concentrate that appears to be anode mud left over from the electrolytic separation… The mill was torn down during WWII… A match head of the concentrate dissolved in water yields a striking clear violet color, the color of colloidal gold… I shipped several pounds to a scrap refiner in New York in 2001… He returned it claiming that it contained no gold… He also said it ignited or exploded when he tried to process it… I’ve fired the material to 2300 degrees without flux, resulting in a black sponge resembling the description of platinum black… Fluxed with borax and heated to 2300*F it yields a very hard, thick iridescent, silvery white metallic substance that fits the description of platinum/iridium… I am beginning to experiment with aqua regia but my budget limitations prevent me from acquiring the necessary reagents… I will provide images in the near future as my research of the material develops… That’s it for now… Dr Glazo…
Greetings from the California Desert...
I’m Dr Glazo… Also known as Allen Steiner… I reside in Lancaster, (north) Los Angeles County, California… That’s in the Antelope Valley, which is the westernmost part of the Mojave Desert… If you are familiar with gold mining history of Southern California, I live about 15 miles southeast of the Tropico mine of Rosamond, (Kern County), first explored by Ezra Hamilton in 1898 when antelope still roamed these parts…
Ezra, a foreman in a tile manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, kept a gold pan handy to check out the metal content of clays that were used in his plant… He found a few flakes of gold in a batch of white kaolin (clay) that came from the north side of Tropico Hill, so he traveled out (by train and horse) to investigate… On his 3rd or 4th trip, (persistence), he discovered a lode deposit, filed a claim and began mining… According to one historian, in 1902 the gold vein yielded $115,000 per ton… At the going rate of $16.00 per ounce that’s about seven thousand ounces of gold per ton of rock…
The Tropico mine is located on a fault that parallels the Garlock fault… At the west end of the Antelope Valley, the Garlock dissects the well known San Andreas fault near Gorman, (Interstate 5 on the Grapevine)… Traveling northeast along the base of the Tehachapi Mountains through Mojave and California City, one comes to the ghost town of Garlock, known for one of California’s largest gold nuggets, (I think Knott’s Berry farm has a replica… It’s about 3 feet long…) The Garlock fault produced an earthquake in the late 1870s of an estimated 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude on Richter’s scale… A few miles west of Garlock, is the Randsburg/Johannesburg mining district… (Remember, this is California, not South Africa)… Randsburg and Mojave still have active gold mines...
I acquired the nickname, Glazo, while studying ceramics at our local community college because of the colorful blends of glazes I developed for my pottery… I opened my first pottery shop in 1972, manufacturing stoneware produced on the potter’s wheel… Ceramic glazes utilize metal oxides for color… Cobalt oxide yields dark blue, iron oxide /rust red, chrome oxide / forest green, nickel oxide / chocolate brown, copper carbonate/turquoise green, et cetera… When copper carbonate is fired in a reducing atmosphere – (obtained by closing the flue damper of a natural gas kiln just enough to cause un-combusted carbon monoxide to linger in the kiln) – the carbon monoxide takes an oxygen molecule from the green copper carbonate, yielding carbon dioxide that escapes through the flue, while copper oxide, an outstanding blood red remains suspended in the glaze... Copper red reduction glazes are the most difficult to attain by studio potters because the reduction must be done between 1400 and 1800 degrees (F), just before the glaze begins to vitrify… If the reduction is done before 1400*F, the carbon monoxide permeates the clay body making it susceptible to thermal shock, not good if one makes casseroles for baking food because a casserole full of baked beans might suddenly crack in half when it reaches 300-400 degrees in a conventional oven, spilling the beans all over the oven… If the reduction is done after the glaze fluxes (vitrifies), the carbon monoxide can’t permeate the glaze so the copper remains turquoise green…
After some 35 years in the pottery business having produced and sold about 70,000 pots, I feel qualified to add the moniker Dr. before my nickname, Glazo… I taught my craft at a community college in Arizona for about five years, but I haven’t earned a so-called “doctorate” from a “university”… I also worked for about a year as a kiln operator for Rockwell International – Space Division in Palmdale, CA, where our nation’s Space Shuttle fleet was assembled… Our shop produced the insulating tile that keeps the orbiters from burning up on re-entry… I won’t bore you with the politics of the space race…
I’ve built or modified each kiln used in my ceramics business, from my first free standing 18 cubic foot catenary arch (parabolic arch), made from natural gas guzzling hard refractory, to my 36 cu/ft production kiln, a 5’x5’x6’ steel heat treating furnace lined with 4.5 inch silica water well filters with a 2” inner hot face of 2400*F Kaowool (trademark) ceramic fiber blanket, (the same material used to insulate the space shuttle’s cargo bay doors)… Hard refractory brick absorbs 27 times as much heat as fiber blanket… In 1977, my 20 cu/ft hard brick kiln in Colorado used 70 gallons of propane for a 2350* glaze firing as opposed to 16 gallons to reach 2280* in my 36 cu/ft Kaowool fiber lined kiln…
I’ve made a reasonably good living as a sole proprietor in the ceramics business… Considering my knowledge and experience working with kilns, clay and glaze materials, combined with living in an area with a rich gold mining history, the investigation of precious metal refining technology is a natural progression of my career… So this year, 2009, I’ve decided to fulfill my ambition of pouring my own 24 karat gold bullion… In 2006, I studied a textbook on fire assay written in the mid-1940s, (I’ll provide the author and title when I retrieve the book from a friend)… This month (January 2009) I built and test fired a very small smelting furnace that holds four 12 ounce (water volume) assay crucibles… I reached 2400*F in the latest firing, melting some silver and gold bearing concentrate I obtained 10 years ago from the site of a local metal recovery operation that was abandoned in the late 1980s… Unfortunately, the concentrates are laced with much iron… But I just like to melt stuff at high temperatures…
Needless to say, I have many 5 gallon buckets of gold and silver bearing sands and rock I’ve accumulated in my travels throughout California… So it’s time to finish some of this stuff… California is truly the Golden State… So much for my introduction to your forum… I reached the site after stumbling upon the book by Hoke, which is the driving force behind my current quest… I hope my lengthy dissertation is accepted by all the members… I like to write, if you hadn’t noticed…!!! Most importantly, I enjoy learning and teaching…
One more item of interest… While exploring an abandoned mill site about 12 years ago, a friend and I discovered a 55 gallon drum that contained a sizable quantity of concentrate that appears to be anode mud left over from the electrolytic separation… The mill was torn down during WWII… A match head of the concentrate dissolved in water yields a striking clear violet color, the color of colloidal gold… I shipped several pounds to a scrap refiner in New York in 2001… He returned it claiming that it contained no gold… He also said it ignited or exploded when he tried to process it… I’ve fired the material to 2300 degrees without flux, resulting in a black sponge resembling the description of platinum black… Fluxed with borax and heated to 2300*F it yields a very hard, thick iridescent, silvery white metallic substance that fits the description of platinum/iridium… I am beginning to experiment with aqua regia but my budget limitations prevent me from acquiring the necessary reagents… I will provide images in the near future as my research of the material develops… That’s it for now… Dr Glazo…
