NICKEL FOR ALL THE WORLD
Canada has a nickel mine out of which has been taken so much ore that
if it were put all together the pile would be larger than the National
Capital at Washington. About ten million tons have already been dug
from it and there are still millions left. Indeed, it is apparently
inexhaustible. It is known as the Creighton, and is situated about
eight miles from Sudbury in the province of Ontario not far north of
Georgian Bay. The International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd., which
owns it, is the largest nickel producer in the world, and supplies most
of that metal used in the United States.
There are only two places so far discovered where nickel exists in
large quantities. One is in the little island of New Caledonia off the
eastern shore of Australia on the opposite side of the globe. About
ten per cent. of the total world production comes from there. The
other is here in Canada, in a region that yields eight times as much
as New Caledonia. A small amount of nickel is obtained also by the
electrolytic method in the refining of copper and other ores.
The ore near Sudbury is a combination of nickel, copper, sulphur, and
iron. It is found in mighty beds or pockets going down no one knows how
deep. On one side of the deposit is granite and on the other a black
formation known as diorite.
At first the ore was quarried rather than mined, and a huge pit was
formed that looks like a volcanic crater. It reminds me of the Bromo
volcano, which I visited in the mountains of eastern Java. Later a
shaft was sunk, and the vast body of nickel I have mentioned has
been taken out by running tunnels into the ore at different levels.
The lowest level of the shaft is now fourteen hundred feet below the
earth’s surface. There hundreds of workmen are drilling and blasting.
They load the ore on cars, which carry it to an underground storage
chamber, where the large pieces are crushed. It is then hoisted to
the top of the shaft house, a structure as high as a fourteen-story
building. After descending through rock crushers and screens, it is
ready for smelting.
Through the kindness of one of the officials of the International
Nickel Company, I have been able to go through its smelters at Copper
Cliff, which cover many acres. The country about is as arid as the
desert of Sahara. Before the mines were discovered, it was a green
forest and one may still see here and there charred stumps standing
out upon the barren landscape. In the town itself there is not a green
leaf, a blade of grass, a bush, or a flower to be seen at any time of
the year. It makes me think of the nitrate fields about Iquique in
northern Chile, where all is sand and rock and there is no fresh water
for hundreds of miles. All this is due to the sulphur that comes from
the ore. It so fills the air about Copper Cliff that no vegetation will
grow.
After being crushed and screened the ore is roasted. Hundreds of tons
of it are piled upon beds of cord wood and the fine ore dust is spread
over the top. A fire is started and burns day after day for a period of
two months or more. This drives out fifteen or twenty per cent. of the
sulphur, which rises in a smoke of a light yellow colour. The smoke is
almost pure sulphur. It smells like burnt matches and it fills the air
about the furnace to such an extent that the men use rubber nose caps
to protect their lungs from the fumes. These caps are for all the world
like the nipples on babies’ nursing bottles, save that they are as big
as your fist, and each has a sponge inside it soaked with carbonate
of ammonia. This counteracts the effect of the sulphur and makes it
possible for the men to work. I had one of these nipples over my nose
when I went through the works, but nevertheless my lungs became filled
with sulphur. I coughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks, and as
I did so I thought if some of our preachers could get such a taste
of brimstone their word pictures of the lower regions would be more
realistic.
One might suppose that the miners would be injured by these sulphur
fumes. They are, on the contrary, as healthy as any people in the
world. The children have rosy cheeks and the men are more rugged in
appearance than those about Pittsburgh, or Anaconda, Montana.
Even after the roasting there is still about seven per cent. of sulphur
left. Most of this is removed in the smelting, which reduces the ore to
a crude metal known as matte. Matte is the form in which the nickel is
sent to the refineries.
Formerly most of the refining was done in the United States or Europe,
but during the World War the International Nickel Company built a
refinery at Port Colborne, Ontario, and most of the Sudbury ore is
now refined there. A large quantity goes also to Huntington, West
Virginia, for making what is known as monel metal, an alloy of nickel
and copper that possesses great strength, does not corrode easily,
and is impervious to electrical currents. It is used in hotel kitchen
equipment, in dyeing and pickling vats, and in many kinds of electrical
apparatus.
The mineral deposits of Sudbury were discovered by the Canadian Pacific
Railway, which was responsible also for the finding of silver at
Cobalt. However, no attention was paid to the nickel in the ore, which
for years was considered valuable only for the copper it contained.
Part of the ore was sent to New Jersey for smelting and refining, and
part to Wales. The reduction works at New Jersey looked upon the nickel
as of no account and let it run off with the slag, while the Wales
smelters paid only for the copper and kept the nickel as a private
rake-off. Later the mine owners discovered that the nickel was far more
valuable than the copper, and since then nickel has been the principal
source of profit.
Although the largest, the Creighton is by no means the only nickel mine
here. The British American Nickel Company owns and operates the Murray
mine, where nickel was first found in Canada. It formerly belonged
to the Vivians of Wales. This company has a large smelting plant at
Nickelton, not far from Sudbury, and a refinery at Deschennes, near
Ottawa. A half dozen mines are owned by the Mond Nickel Company, which
ships practically all its matte to Clydach, Wales, for refining. The
copper in this matte is recovered as copper sulphate, which is exported
largely to Italy and other grape-growing countries for spraying the
vines. The matte exported by the Mond Company is shipped in oaken
casks, which are refilled in Wales with the copper sulphate and sent to
Italy. The Italian peasants insist on the chemical being received in
such containers, not only to keep the sulphate crystals unbroken, but
also because after emptying, they saw the casks in two and use them as
washtubs.
The production of nickel reached its height in 1918, when five thousand
tons of ore a day were mined. This was due to the many uses of the
metal in the World War. After the Armistice, the nickel market was so
over-stocked that a severe slump in prices occurred, and the nickel
production fell from forty-six thousand tons in 1918 to eight thousand
tons in 1922. There were large quantities of the metal in all the
belligerent countries, and these had to be absorbed before the Canadian
industry could return to normal. The end of 1922 found a more active
demand, and this was followed by an increase in production and sales.
During my stay at Copper Cliff I have had a talk about nickel and its
uses with one of the metallurgists of the International Nickel Company.
This man has been working successfully in nickel for thirty years or
more, and he knows as much about the metal, perhaps, as any one in
the country. Among the first discoverers of nickel, says he, were the
German miners of old, who found this metal in their copper ore. Its
hardness and the difficulty they experienced in smelting it led them to
associate it with “Old Nick”--hence its name. This hardness is one of
the most valuable characteristics in its present-day uses.
“Most of the nickel goes into nickel-steel,” said the metallurgist,
“although it enters also into many other manufactures. The value of
nickel-steel is due to the fact that it combines exceeding toughness
with great strength. Copper wire has great toughness. A steel needle
or pen-knife has great strength. But it is only nickel-steel that has
both toughness and strength. This makes it the best metal we know for
armour plate. A battleship with a hull covered with steel or iron would
be shattered to pieces if it were hit by one of the modern shells. If
the armour plate is made of nickel-steel, the largest projectile makes
only a dimple, such as you would in a pat of butter by sticking your
finger into it. This property of toughness is added to the steel by
putting in three and one half per cent. of nickel during the process
of manufacturing. All the big warships of to-day have a belt of
nickel-steel armour plate about eighteen inches thick. Nickel is also
alloyed with copper for making army field kitchens and bullet casings.”
Nickel-steel rails are used largely where there are curves at the
bottom of steep grades. When a heavily loaded freight train strikes
such a curve, the only things that hold it on the track are the flanges
of the wheels and the heads of the rails. In winter the rails are apt
to become brittle, and when a heavy train, rushing down hill, strikes
them they sometimes break and there is a wreck. The Horseshoe Curve of
the Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, is made of nickel-steel rails.
The metal is employed also in bridge building. It is going into many of
our large apartment houses and other tall buildings. It is fifty per
cent. stronger than ordinary steel and the result is that less metal
can be used, or with an equal weight the building can have double the
strength. Nickel-steel does not expand or contract as much as common
steel, and for this reason it is made into clock pendulums, which must
be of the same length the year round in order to keep the right time.
As nickel does not rust in air or water, and resists the action of
many acids, it is much used in plating other metals. It is in demand
for cooking utensils, household articles, and plumbing equipment, as
well as for automobile parts. Practically all the nickel contained in
our five-cent pieces is from the Canadian mines. They are only one
quarter nickel, however, the remainder being copper. Indeed, there is
but a fraction of a cent’s worth of nickel in a five-cent piece. A few
countries, however, use pure nickel for their coinage.
Do you know that nickel-steel and meteorites have practically the
same composition? Indeed, the process for making nickel-steel was
suggested by a meteor found in Greenland. This meteor was an immense
mass that had fallen from the skies ages ago and was venerated by the
Greenlanders as a god. The natives were wont to hammer splinters from
it and make them into spear heads and hammer heads, accompanying their
work by prayers to the god. Explorers found that such spear heads were
harder and finer than any others. An Englishman named Riley heard of
these discoveries, and they gave him the idea that ended in the new
metal.