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Flint-mill.

1. (Pottery.) A mill in which burned flints, having been previously stamped to reduce them below a certain size, are ground to powder for mixing with clay to form slip for porcelain.

The flint-mill is a strong circular pan ten or twelve [883] feet in diameter, having a bottom of quartz or felspar blocks, and a runner or runners of hard silicious stones, called chert, lime in any form being inadmissible, as it forms a flux for the other material which would vitrify in the seggars or become blistered by the escape of carbonic acid.

The mill is of the nature of an arrastra, as the running stones are blocks driven by depending bars from the arms which project radially from the rotating vertical axis.

Flint-mill.

The fractured flint is fed into the pan, and water to the depth of eight inches is added. The flint is ground by being levigated between the runners and the bed, and by grinding the particles against each other.

The machine resembles the arrastra of Spain and the Spanish countries of America, excepting that in the arrastra the blocks are dragged around in the bed, being connected by thongs to the revolving arms; and also that the argentiferous slimes are treated with mercury in the arrastra, instead of being merely levigated in water. See arrastra.

The flint-pan is the invention of Brindley, so celebrated for his energetic prosecution of the British canals. Before its introduction the flints were ground dry, and the dust proved very fatal to the work-people.

Mills of similar character, on a smaller scale, are used for grinding felspar, broken porcelain, and other ingredients used in the pottery and porcelain manufacture.

2. (Mining.) A mode formerly adopted for lighting mines in which flints studded on the surface of a wheel were made to strike against a steel and give a quick succession of sparks to light the miner at his work. Sparks will not inflame the fire-damp.

1877.

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