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Laterite into an established system



I got my laterite last week and being a particularily hard headed 
individual, I had to try another way to get the laterite into the 
substrate.

What I attempted was to use a cake decorating 'syringe', not a bag, but 
a big, plastic syringe with interchangeable tips(1.00 at you guessed it, 
the dollar store).  I mixed the laterite by hand into a slurry, it did 
however retain a few larger chunks.  The chunks are the downfall of this 
scheme.  I was using substrate gold, (yes I know there is instructions 
on how to make nuggets, but remember the hard headed thing) and it has a 
'shalely' purple sort of chunk throughout it.  They plugged the outlet 
and generally caused an annoyance.

If you've access to a cake decorating bag(also 1.00 from..) and an old 
blender(unlike one member of this list) the 'slurry' method would work 
well I think.  Ahh, who am I kidding, just use the darn nugget method, 
it's far superior.

These 'shalely' chunks offer us a hint as to where substrate gold comes 
from.  The product so far as I know, is never dried out, evidence of 
this is the fact the shale chunks stay together.  Shale as I've learned 
first hand is one of the few materials which stays together well while 
moist, but not saturated.  When dried out, it crumbles to dust.  I 
learned this on a river tour after a flood in southern Alberta.  

They are a fairly rich purple color on the inside (where, tell me I'm 
wrong, they've not been as heavily oxidized).  ?So? what my guess is 
that this laterite is a reworked sediment(clay) that is high in iron, 
and enriched or naturally high in a lot of other nutrients.  

Steve and others, ever try a shale?  Rich in organics and nutrients, 
fine grained (high CEC if you care), a lot more fun to work with than 
plain old clay in the subsoil, but a lot harder to come by.  Any 
analysis on shale out there?  I'm sure someone has a more concise 
definition on shale...oohhhh, here's that dictionary of geological 
terms..

Shale, a fine grained detrital sedimentary rock, formed by the 
compaction of clay, silt or mud.  It has a finely laminated structure, 
which gives it a fissility along which the rock splits readily...

Alright, so the shale I'm talking about isn't all the way to rock, maybe 
it isn't full blown shale, but I think we understand what I'm referring 
to.

Colin Anderson 

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