Notes of explanation:
Hue - pronounced WAY
Hui - pronounced Hughy
Hua - pronounced Huwa
Dati - IndoDutch term for Papa
Baki - IndoDutch term for Brother
Onkla - IndoDutch term for Uncle
From Book 9
When they had returned from Malaysia, Hua, Hui and Dennis had returned from their short visit back to Tonga after graduation and were ready for work. The three mechanical engineers would go a long way toward helping Concho fill in jobs with manpower. Concho was beginning to think he saw a ray of light at the end of his tunnel of madhouse. Just maybe he could pull this off!
Chapter 1 - OFF TO MEXICO
Paul was a little uneasy leaving Dakar all alone in Mexico, he had not yet gained the experience in handling local employees nor dealing with customers. He asked Concho if Hui and Derren could be assigned to assist him and Concho agreed.
The next morning, the three of them were at Hilo Airport boarding a plane for Los Angeles, where they would meet the three Crew Leaders that 'Tal was lending them, Manuel Torres, Carlos Espinosa and Pedro Valdez. All three were native Spanish speakers and would be able to work with local crews. Paul could get by in Spanish, if he had to as he had taken it for three years.
It was a short flight, only 4 hours to Los Angeles, but they had a 6-hour delay before they could catch the Aero Mexico flight to Puerto Vallarta. Paul arranged for a conference room at the airport and he met with the three crew leaders and both Hui and Derren. It was a productive meeting, the three crew leaders were friendly, affable men and anxious to continue their employment with Best Sons' Engineering. They had just come off a job, working for 'Tal and Curtis Grant, a new Engineer in the Fairfield Office, on a large drainage project in New Orleans.
Paul laid out the concept drawings and showed the men what was involved. Carlos had done a mine job for another company and mentioned that he had experience installing Le Tourneau mining machinery.
The couple; Hui and Derren, were new to mining, but Hui had prior experience installing a hot gas generating system, so he was familiar with industrial installations and he was, after all, a Best Brother.
Hui and Derren had recently graduated from the University of Hawaii with degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Derren, a grandson of Prince George, the Head of State of Tonga, was the married partner of Hui and had also taken the name Best, for his own.
Paul told them that Dakar Mock would be the Civil Engineer in Charge of Mine Development and Hui was be in charge of the mine machinery installation. Derren would assist him in the rebuild of the processing plant and refining system.
He reminded them that this was the largest contract that Best Bros' Engineering had ever attempted. The two contracts, Mine Development and Processing Plant Rebuild was over $1 billion!
As their flight time approached, they had a light supper in an airport diner before heading out to the International Terminal. They went through Security and took the transporter out to the International Departure Terminal for their wait in the Premium Class Lounge.
The three Crew Leaders were a little uncomfortable in the luxurious surroundings, but, between Paul and Hui telling tales of other departures and exciting happening over the years, they were all reduced to laughter.
Darren was new to all this, but he had been around the Best Family for a year now and he knew that those around him would protect him and Hui with their very lives, if need be.
They were shortly called for their flight and were soon seated in the Business Class section of the huge aircraft. The flight departed on time and was direct to Puerto Vallarta. It was only a two hour flight, so they were glad they had a meal in Los Angeles as they were served only light snacks.
They arrived and were glad to see the friendly face of Dakar Mock waiting for them as they passed through Immigration and Customs. Dakar had a crew of El Majestico employees to assist them with their luggage and get them over to the private aircraft terminal, where a helicopter was waiting for them.
It was past dark, so there was nothing to see on the short flight to the mine site in the mountains east of Puerto Vallarta.
After what seemed like a short night, they were ready to begin the project the next morning. The first order of business was to meet with the management of El Majestico. The Vice President, Sr. Marco de Morales, was located on-site and he met with them along with Sr. Carlos Villanueva and Mr. Eden Franks, an American expatriate who had worked for El Majestico Mining since he graduated from the University of Texas in Austin. Paul laid out the projected work schedule and the manpower needed from the mining company. As soon as that had been all settled, Paul and Dakar filled out the purchase orders for the purchase of machinery to be installed in both locations, the mine and the processing plant.
They had been assigned an office in the administration building and a bilingual secretary was included. When all the ordering had been completed, Paul notified management that they were ready to begin construction and that all operations were to cease until the project was completed.
It took several days to run through the shutdown process and they used the time to assign work crews to the three crew leaders. Paul had told Sr. Morales that they would hire 75 plant employees at the same rate of pay they were paying the American crew to assist in the work.
He spent a whole day with Dakar interviewing potential crew members for the project. Of more than 200 men applying for the work, the two men winnowed it down to 75 men. Paul put in a telephone call to Hilo and spoke to Chic Massengil. Chic was to be the Crew Chief on the job and Paul told him to collect all the Best Sons' Engineering Crew and to head for Puerto Vallarta, that their crew boxes had arrived and the company was in the process of shutting down operations for the rebuild.
Plant personnel had already removed the overburden that covered the ore body and had built roads down into the new pit.
He introduced Dakar to the Crew Leader and told Dakar it was "his baby" now.
Chapter 2 - THE REBUILD BEGINS
The two largest pieces of machinery in the processing plant were the ore crusher and the smelting furnace, both of which were over 100 years old. There was no way either could be rebuilt to meet the demands of a modern processor, so they were the first things to be dismantled.
They found that the smelting furnace had been built up, using an even older unit as its base, when they had completed the removal, they had a 30 foot deep hole in the floor.
Paul was uneasy about removing the crusher, there were no drawings available and plant rumor had it that it was even older than the smelting furnace! Chic Massengil was personally supervising its removal. He happened to look down in the hole that was being opened up to remove the bedplate when he looked down and saw something that made his blood run cold, he screamed, "STOP!- ALTO!"
He climbed down and peered under the bedplate into a cavity and asked for a flashlight. To his horror, there were human skeletons and skulls piled in the cavity beneath the bedplate.
He ordered the work halted and went looking for Paul, whom he found in conference with Sr. Morales. They both came at a dead run and, after one look, Sr. Morales notified the Jalisco State Governor's Office.
Paul decided to shut down work for the day; the local workers were beginning to mutter about evil spirits and curses. The next day Officers from the Federales (Federal Police) arrived on the scene under the direction of a Captain Ortega. They asked Paul how long did he think that machine had been there and Paul replied, "Judging from the type of castings and bearings, I would think it dates back to the 1850's, although, it might have been installed used at a later date than that."
The Federales carefully collected the remains and showed Paul some deteriorated pieces of leather and beadwork. Captain Ortega said that he would have the remains investigated by someone from the Anthropological Museum and asked that they discontinue digging until they had inspected the remains.
Hui and Derren were troubled by the find, both young men were Polynesians by birth and their people held human remains as sacred.
Paul pulled the work crews off the crusher and put them to removing the settlers and flotation tanks. Those, also were very old, having been constructed of cast iron plates bolted together. There were no further surprises and the workers settled back down, it took 4 weeks to clear the smelter floor. Word came back from the University that the human remains appeared to be that of Indians and were thought to have been in that cavity for at least 200 years.
The new smelter machinery was beginning to arrive at the port of Puerto Vallarta. The port was small and did not have sufficient cargo handling equipment to rapidly accept cargo, they had to use both yard cranes and the ship's cargo booms to lift the heavy machinery from the holds of the ship.
Hui and Derren inspected each piece of machinery as it came off the ships for damage. The biggest single piece was the crusher, it weighed upward of 200 tons and it had to be placed on two lo-boys side by side.
It took 6 tractors to pull up the mountain grades, the road had to be blocked at both ends while the pull was underway. It was 9 days in transit from the pier to the smelter. The smelter building had been cleared to receive the crusher, so no work could be done until it was in place.
They transferred the work crews to the mine pit, getting it ready to receive the wheel digger and substation to supply the electric tether haulers.
Dakar was tearing his hair out, the plant workers that had been assigned to him were a superstitious lot and any unusual occurrence, even a boulder rolling down the embankment was a sign of evil spirits to them.
The Le Tourneau tether trucks and clam-shells were delivered and followed the crusher up the mountain roads to the site.
They were fully assembled and required only to be wired into the cable mast to be ready for use.
The wheel digger required some assembly, as did the clam-shell booms.
It was evident the mine would be ready before the processing plant, so Dakar sent one of his crews to assist in the processing plant, along with Carlos Espinosa, the Crew Leader.
Carlos was a dynamic young man and his crew followed him in getting the work done. As soon as Carlos' crew started in the processing plant, work accelerated noticeably. Even with the work delays caused by finding bones under the old crusher, the job was slightly ahead of schedule.
The new smelter was a multiple-chamber furnace system and it had 6 chambers that could be fired separately or all 6 at one time, all feeding into a single flue.
They had been able to salvage the retorts and it took some time to connect the furnace chambers to the retorts by way of conveyors and chutes.
Derren was in charge of reinstalling and connecting the retorts, not one of the several units were the same as another. Each installation was unique.
The plant management had wanted a continuous caster for the raw ingots, but Paul felt fortunate to have been able to talk them out of it. Not only would it have been a nightmare to install, any "burp" in the process would have shut the entire facility down.
Almost without realizing it, a year had passed and the facility was again, looking like a working mine/smelter.
They test-fired up the rebuilt retorts with some processed ore that had been in storage from the previous equipment, it was not a true test, but the sulfur was roasted out of the melt and captured in the scrubbers.
The biggest hold-up was aligning the crusher to the drive motor and setting the ball mill.
The workers assembled and disassembled the ball mill several times and still, they could not determine why it was not working.
Hui called for Paul and they tore the mill down again for the third time. Paul climbed all through the mill looking for anything that would cause it to improperly size the ore.
On the fourth time, Paul noticed that the balls looked scarred and pitted. They were badly worn and were out of round. He located a Brinell Hardness Tester and discovered the balls were only cast steel, not chrome alloy hardened steel.
As soon as the manufacturer replaced the balls, the problem was solved.
The final part of the project was the Assay Room and the final silver caster. The silver caster was designed to cast 100-ounce bars and was fully automated. The bars travelled on a conveyor through the cooling room and directly into the vault.
Chapter 3 - START UP
As startup loomed up in the near future, Concho came for a visit. He had been running herd on projects in Malaysia and The Philippines so he made a swing to Mexico to see how the project was going.
Paul showed him around with justifiable pride, the project was ahead of schedule and under budget. While he was there, the mine pit was started for a test run. They stood on the lip watching the wheel digger begin to chew its way through the stone and dirt. As soon as a pile had been established, the clam-shells began filling the tether trucks with the ore.
For the test, they didn't bother with the float screens, as they just wanted to test flow-thru. The trucks delivered their load to the conveyors and before they could get there, the crusher feeder was filled. When they started the crusher, the huge drum began to turn, breaking the ore into manageable-sized pieces.
The size could be varied by raising or lowering the platen, the broken debris then was delivered to the ball mill for final sizing and conveyed to a holding bin before being batch-dumped in the furnace melt chamber.
It was here that the silver melted and was decanted out the bottom of the melt chamber and cast into rough ingots. The tailings would be dumped onto a conveyor and transported to a pile outside to cool off. The rough ingots were then delivered to the retorts, where they were again melted and compressed air bubbled up through the molten silver to burn out combustible impurities and sulfur.
There was space in the building for the future installation of an electrolytic line that would further purify the silver to .999 fine. For now, the rough silver went to a bar caster and made into 100 ounce bars.
The load on the melt chambers would be reduced by using the float screens to get rid of the dirt and non-ore debris. Concho was visibly impressed with the work and made sure his crews knew of his pleasure. Paul told Concho that he surely would keep the three Crew Leaders; he said that they were worth their weight in gold.
Concho left and Paul met with Sr. Morales, advising him of the nearing completion. He took the Vice President on a tour of the work project and showed him what his plant looked like after nearly 2 years of work. They scheduled a pilot run for the next week to detect any problem areas.
The four Best Sons' Engineers and all the plant management that could justify their presence, watched as the raw ore started to pour through the plant. There was still much overburden in the mine pit, so the dust screens were pouring sand and dirt off the input conveyor as it fed the primary crusher. The plant staff had to put an extra truck in service to handle the fines loads.
The finely sized rock bits came out of the ball mill and were chuted to each of the smelt chambers, already being heated. When the smelter crew judged the smelt was ready, they tapped the bung and liquid silver poured out into the rough caster. They stopped the process, so that each part could be inspected and Paul told the crews to knock off for the day while the inspection proceeded.
One of the smelt chambers had a cracked bung and two others required replacing the igniters. The next morning, they were ready to proceed testing the retorts, assay room and the bar caster. No problems were found and Hui was justifiably proud of his design on the inlets to the retorts.
Laboratory tests showed there was too much debris in the final silver, so they went back and readjusted the fines screens and restarted the process. After tweaking and twiddling for three days, the final silver ran reliably at an acceptable level.
The job was 35 days ahead of schedule and both the plant and company management were delighted, at the final conference, Sr. de Morales had checks ready, drawn on Bankers Trust of New York for the full amount of the contract plus the T&M.
Paul was a little staggered; he was holding nearly one and a half billion dollars in his hands! He went that afternoon to the regional branch of Banco de Mexico and had the funds wired to Concho in Hilo.
They closed out the work and paid off the local crews before packing up the toolboxes and making ready to depart.
That evening, the senior staff of El Majestico feted the Americans at a supper that seemed to last until; near daylight. There was much tequila being passed around and Hui made sure none of it came his way. His one experiment with alcohol, when he was a young teen, was all he wanted for his entire lifetime.
The next morning, they bused down the mountains to the airport in Puerto Vallarta, more than one fuzzy head moaned as the bus jumped and creaked its way down the mountain roads.
They caught the evening flight back to Los Angeles and the first-morning flight to Hilo.
Everyone was happy to be back on their tropical island and their next project.
TBC
There are more tales to be told of this remarkable and talented family as they travel the Pacific Basin building and rebuilding plants and machinery.