Custom milling

It's not a dumb question , Rich . Many smaller mines could not afford their own mills . A number of mills did "custom milling" for customers large and small .Sometimes large mines would employ an independent mill when their mill was down for repair ,too busy ,or experimenting with milling different ores . Smaller mines would arrange to have their ores processed at a certain date . Custom mills often had different bins to store different ore consignments . Once a consignment was milled ,the system was purged with fresh water , blowing all waste out to the tailings and the process started again for a different consignment . In the meantime ,the assayer is grading the milling of the custom ore ,start to finish . The Pride of the West mill at Howardsville was a recent example .