heating quartz for smashing

i heard you can put quartz in a fire and heat it so it will crush easier, anyone have any info or a guide to doing this
cheers

Gidday Martin,

That is true !

I have put large species in the home oven, cranked it up with the grill on also.
Gave it about 20 minutes then dropped it into a tub of cold water. Hey presto, quartz has become brittle.

The oldtimers also used to do it before putting the quartz through the crusher to make it more brittle.

Cheers,
Rick

cheers Rick, i have a fair bit to do so this will make the task easier, now to let the missus know i need the oven for a few days.

martinjsto wrote:i heard you can put quartz in a fire and heat it so it will crush easier, anyone have any info or a guide to doing this
cheers

build a small scale 'Roasting Kiln' like they use to do it


( from http://www.egold.net.au/ )
In the very early days of quartz mining, crushing machines were relatively light, and kilns were used to roast quartz, to soften it prior to crushing (ed. and help release gold from mineralized pyritic ore.) The quartz was added to the kilns, of variable construction, in layers, interspersed with layers of fuel. The quartz was roasted as the fire worked upwards, and the product was shovelled out from below.

good idea, thanks Nuggiedreamer.

How much have you been able to extract out of the quartz so far.
There was some good lookin gold in the rock.
cheers
Cliff

hi Cliff, i have finished the last specimen today and got a total of 62.28 grams of gold. 6.8 grams was in nuggets so 56 grams from the specimens including the crystal one i have not smashed. certainly a great trip.
I have not looked at my load of fool's gold specimens yet so there maybe a bit in them but i doubt it.
cheers

Well done Martin, bet it looked good in the pan when you cleaned up! Just wondering if you cooked the quartz or just smacked it up as is?

Cheers
Stingray

sure does stingray, nothing better than a pan full of gold, i did fire some of it and tried it in my rock crusher but it didnt like the hard quartz so a redesign is in order, most i just smashed in the dolly pot. after finishing i put all the dregs back into the pan to see what i missed and got another 0.8 grams that floated out of the pan on the first run so it pays to do it twice.

Hi Martin, after I saw your home made crusher I had a look around on the internet and found someone who had welded a round lump of steel to the end of a small jackhammer bit and used it as an electric dolly in a dolly pot. Good idea I thought - I've got one of those cheap Ozito 'jackhammers' from Bunnings and reckon it should work OK with that.

It might be a simple solution for you seeing you'll have a sh*t load of quartz species to process when you get back from your next trip!.

Cheers and good luck
Stingray