Smelting a rock is something new to me. While I have crushed and then refined many different minerals, and made colourful pigments from them, this process is something I’m unfamiliar with.

Without me writing too much about it, you can probably guess from the photograph above my first attempt at smelting ore didn’t go according to plan.  After putting some pure, crushed galena into a porcelain bowl I placed it over my Bunsen burner.  I’ve been reading about this process in preparation and I knew it was important that oxygen get to the specimen in the beginning (into order to change it from a sulfide into an oxide before trying to melt it) but what I didn’t know was nice my nice porcelain evaporation bowl wouldn’t take the heat!

But, if you look carefully, you can see that some of the galena has actually started to melt; but only a little bit …