For 130$ you could build a 10times better still from steel and Cu parts within one day
And, within a day the copper parts would be attacked by the mercury.
So just a standard death trap then. I imagine the designers saying to testers, "but did it explode, no? Full production!". SWIM - 24-12-2017 at 16:19
Gold miners have generally been pretty cavalier about mercury.
I've seen worse mercury retorts on Ebay, including a few made with copper pipe (and air condenser only about 2 feet long).
I sure wouldn't use that thing, and I doubt getting that pipe-threaded bottom off the pot would be much fun after you'd heated it a few times.
I would guess these things get fired up in the middle of nowhere on some mining claim where any escaping mercury doesn't harm anybody much except the
operator.
A lot of the gold country out here is already pretty contaminated with mercury from years of mining so they probably figure a little more won't make
much difference.
It's not uncommon to find gold nuggets in some parts of Northern California that have metallic mercury stuck on them. Radium212 - 26-12-2017 at 03:35
Seems a tad ramshackle. Perhaps adding some vapour traps, or an extra condenser might make it a little safer.
