SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 November 1921, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

By "VOLT" |[=

A MINERAL YOU CAN WEAVE. Fifty-five miles from Selukwe, in Rhodesia, on an unspeakable road, axle-deep in dust, is Shabani. And Shabani is the centre of an important and evergrowing group of asbestos mines— rather, quarries. The Shabani mine itself is cut out of the side of a hill, is some six years old or so, and has already an output of nearly 1000 tons a month. You are probably familiar enough with asbestos as you see it in storesa fluffy, cotton-like material that helps to give out heat but is indestructable by fire. As it comes out of the quarry it looks like stems of grass that have been welded together. You can pick it from the rock with your hands; you can pull the stems apart into infinitesimal fractions, you can rub them in your fingers till they become pliable and silky, but you can't break them. They are tougher than whipcord. You can weave asbestos. You can make string of it, or cotton or clothing. And yet it is a mineral. Its uses and potentialities are not yet half realised. In the motor business, in the shipyard, in the building trades its importance is increasing yearly. It is perhaps destined to supersede corrugated iron. The roofs of the huts in the Shabani native "compound" aro made of it. It has a thousand possible uses besides making fire-proof curtains. In short, asbestos has a wonderful future in the world's industries. I was shown a cross cutting in the walls of the Shabani quarry (writes a Daily Mail contributor). Its depth is roughly 20 feet. There is a stratum of rock, irregular and varying from ten inches to a couple of feet— a stratum of asbestos from one to three inches thick, then more rock, then more asbestos. Experimental lodes have been driven down and the same formation exists below. The whole side of the hill is like some Gargantuan jam sandwich. I have described asbestos in the rough as like grass stems welded together. They vary in this mine from one inch to three inches in length, and lying in the seam between the rock they are all perpendicular. Except for the slight variation in depth there is no irregularity in their formation. They have been placed in their position, handy for exploitation by mankind, by the greatest engineers in the world, Dame Nature and Co., Unlimited. It costs £l3 a ton to get Shabani asbestos to London, as against £5 a ton for the Canadian. Explosives and other mining materials and the bags in which it is packed all cost more than in Canada, and while labor is much cheaper, being mostly native, Rhodesian and South African asbestos are heavily handicapped by production and transport costs. And there are rumors of prices going down through Russian competition.