G'evening Johnson, mi new buddy: Shall we start off with some fresh tea brewed for you ?

I haven't the faintest idea why the mill hasn't been posted as running at proposed capacity, perhaps it is, but production is slowed up further down the line, but it does seem to me that I recently saw the mill out put posted in here, which means that it 'is' running in good order. but the problem can easily be more than just the mill' capacity..

I long ago found that just taking over a former operation with the equipment already installed and 'formerly working' is often a frustrating experience.. In one case we had a ball mill that hadn't been used recently, It had simply been shut down and the last charge and the balls had formed a solid cement block which required getting inside and simply hard hand work to gradually break up the cement block.

Since none of the men would enter to do this, as usual it fell to me to do the job, took about a week..

On another location we had lights on a slender pole about 25 ft high, next to the cone crusher, since the base had loosened from the mother rock , it swayed in 15 ft arcs. None of the men would replace them, so we lost two days production until I finally went up and replaced the lights.

Again, on the Colorados mine, the one where we were held under armed siege for three days by the mt Indians who wanted to kill our labor foreman, One day one of our tractors appeared huffing and puffing, dragging tons of extremely rusty iron etc which it happily dumped near the Cyanide tanks. When I asked what it was for, my buddy, who owned the mine said "it is for you, it is our new thickener, now get to cracking and put it together and working" ??

"What's a thickener" I asked. "Just that, now get to work " he said ..

Well after scrounging through all of our mining magazines I finally found a picture of it. It was about 20 ft. long and 6 ft in diameter. With this data, I finally rebuilt it at about 2 -3 times the cost of a new one, but it did work, and made tons of money for him in the gold.

Many times when you are at the end of the trail, you would order one thing, clearly identified, only to receive a different unit months later. It can be very frustrating.

Getting enough Diesel to keep the generators running through the rainy season, when one cannot be reasonably sure of receiving any, requires buiding large strorage tanks and a form of delivery system..

I do agree that it would help moral greatly if pictures of the present set up were to be posted in here from time to time. Perhaps a simple video from a cellphone camera would do this nicely.

As an alternative - Hint- you can always hire me for a 6 + figure, and all of Jims' peanuts that I wish. hehehehhhe

Don Jose de La Mancha