The 'sicle' that got away!!

[Richard Flanders]

Correct Robin. I thought that one would be easier than it was. For anyone who uses hand saws and does not sharpen their own I'd highly suggest getting a saw setting tool and trying it. It doesn't take long and it's impressive how much you can improve a factory sharpening job yourself.

No one knows what #5 is, eh? Ok. It's a mercury retort. At a gold mine you have a copper plate that is wiped with amalgam of mercury and silver. The very very fine gold gets grabbed by the amalgam as it washes over it in a thin sheet of water and when you clean up you scrape this all of and put it into this iron retort, crank the lid on tight and put it into the blacksmith forge. A pipe connects to the lid and goes into a bucket of water. When the mercury vaporizes off it goes down into the water and condenses to a harmless liquid(or solid depending upon who you ask) again, preventing the breathing of mercury vapors by the operators, leaving the gold in the retort. The gold if melted is then either poured into a dore bar or if not melted and is in "sponge" form, is put into a crucible in an oven for final 'cleaning' and poured from there. This is a very small retort and the lid goes to even a smaller one. I have a much bigger one in my blacksmithing pile and at the mine we have one that has an 8ft long two-man handle set blacksmithed from drill steel on it and must weigh at least 100#. Small retorts like this are also used by folks who pan gold and put a bit of mercury into the pan of gravel to pick up every tiny speck of gold.

[edgarspencer]

The funky brass thing in 5, above, is a hydrostatic lubricator, used on steam engines. as condensate enters through the top connection, it displaces cylinder oil, which flows out the side connection. Engines running at higher pressures need cylinder and valve lubrication, but at lower pressure, the steam is 'wetter'.
The resistor coils are most commonly used for space heaters. but they are also used in generator field controls.