Schoolboys with an Old Ball Mill

Alec Birch
Bits of a ball mill?

Pete Doncliff
a mill of some kind....certainly not artillery.......

Garry Jackson
Alec talking of ball mills,have you seen the ball mill up at the globe mine at reefton in action.Was interesting seeing it started for the first time,,hate to think hows many amps it hauled on start up,the old clutch smoked a bit.With it rotating in a clockwise direction we wondered how far it would travel down the hill if there was ever a major earthquake and it came adrift.

Stuart Dowie
Margaret a ball mill is used to reduce the size of ore to a state where metals (maybe in this case Gold) can be extracted or collected more readily. Cast steel balls of varying sizes are placed in the mill with the ore, the mill is rotated on rollers which is driven by a geared motor. The balls pulverise every thing that's in the mill and the hopefully mineral rich product comes out the other end to be further processed. -Just in case you were wondering- about a Ball Mill. Cheers

Margaret Elaine Sadler
Thanks Stuart Dowie all information to photo's just great

Stuart Dowie
Was trying to find a picture of the mill up at the Globe mine ,but its hiding from me at present.

Garry Jackson
Alec thinking back to the build/commissioning period at globe hill the steel balls they used were about the same diameter as a shot put ,they came in 44 gallon drums from aussie.The steel balls wore down quickly,can remember working up on the dryer unit where they had a row of large ceramic discs a few metres in diameter that dipped into the wet product and by the time it had done a full rotation the moisture had been sucked out leaving a black powder material.Before the roof was put on the dryer,you could see the gold glistening on the discs, in the sun light,the gold was very fine like grains of sand,if you got the angle right with the sun the ceramic discs were glowing a fine yellow colour.