I spent Wednesday and Thursday in Rhode Island. Okay, that isn't exactly true, I spent 6 hours each day in Rhode Island, and spent 6 hours each day driving (to work, to Rhode Island, back to NH).
I had not planned on doing this. It was not on my itinerary - in any way shape or form. However, when the Vice President Asks you (at 3:45 PM on Tuesday mind you), "How would you like to learn how gold reclamation is done and document it?", you know it isn't a question, but a cleverly worded command.
"Sure, that would be interesting," I reply then am told that it is scheduled for the next day. Someone else usually does this, but he is busy - and apparently I am not busy enough. This is all Company R's fault for making me stay late on Tuesday. They were auditing us, and I was called in in the afternoon to discuss documentation, corrective actions, training and calibration with them. If they had not been there, I would have been gone before the VP caught me.
Actually, watching the reclamation was interesting (although not 12 hours worth of interesting). Some stuff is hammered to the consistency of dirt in a rolling cylinder that contains smallish cannon balls (or heavy duty ball bearings).
Dust from our bead blasting operations are sifted and "oversized" that don't make it thru the screen are relegated to the hammer operation, they rest is tumbled and mixed and a sample taken (the rest of the operation is a mystery - the only things we are interested in are the weight of the contents and the percentage of gold within those contents).
Still other stuff goes into the "digest". This is where the metals are put into a huge crock pot, hydrochloric and nitric acids are added, the heat is turned on and it is left simmering like a stew overnight. Once it is done, almost everything is in liquid form. Once again a sample is taken and it is determined what percentage of gold and how many gallons are there.
My company is paid by the reclamation company based upon the samples, weights / gallons and current gold prices. I am just there to make sure that the reclamation company is being honest. Everything is sealed when the reclamation company gets it. I have to verify the seal number when containers are opened (seal is broken). I also had to record seal numbers (or stamp sealing wax with our company seal) every time I walked away from an operation.
All of this was interesting, but got to be boring too. I spent 45 minutes just watching the original sifting operation. Whoohoo was that exciting!
The company used to perform gold reclamation twice a year. Rumor now has it that I might be doing this every 6 weeks or so.
Oh Joy.
Hey! You gotta talk to your Uncle D. He has, for at least 25 years, been saving the tailings from your dad's (and other peoples's) photo development operations--and even saved the little platinum discs that were used to keep stuff from growing on my old, hard contacts. (You may not recall that, regardless of the mechanical engineering he did for the last 2/3 of his career, his degree is in chemical engineering) Anyway, although the drive sounds like a real drag (tell the VP you want a helicopter), it does sound like an interesting outing. Good for you!
Posted by: Cop Car | February 24, 2006 at 11:16 AM
wow 6hours a day driving to and from work. i admire your commitment.
Posted by: Bod | February 25, 2006 at 02:36 AM