08-28-2009, 08:16 PM
Of course if you want some really impressive weight, you could use gold! I worked for Kaiser Steel at their Eagle Mountain Iron Mine back in the early 1970's. I had to go find another job when they closed down and laid off most employees during the long shoreman's strike on the West coast that lasted 6 months. Just before I retired I met a mechanic at one of our customer's shops who had previously worked at Eagle Mountain before they closed the mine completely as far as iron ore was concerned. He told me that there was a guy looking for gold on a claim next to Eagle Mtn's. West pit. Kaiser had been trying to buy his claim to expand the mine for years and finally the guy got discouraged and sold it to Kaiser. They set charges and blew off the side of the mountain. Typically they drilled to set the charges during the day, set the charges and blew them at dusk, and then loaded the truck to take the ore to the pelletizing plant at night. Once the ore went into the plant it would be crushed, iron separated from dirt, and compressed into what looked like rabbit pellets and loaded into ore cars for shipment to the steel mill in Fontana (where California Raceway is today). Nobody noticed until the ore had gone through the smelter and been formed into ingots that their fork lifts could not lift. When they checked on why the fork lift couldn't lift the ingots, they discovered that they had found gold! I don't know if the story is true or a legend, but it makes a good story anyway.