Good morning.
Looks like one of two things. Either the fuel tank from a Russian space craft, or "Wilson," all grown up.
I know, an obscure reference...
5.56mm
It's got a couple of openings. What you do is put gold bearing soil (or black sands, or pulverized clay sometimes) in the ball, seal it up, and a couple of guys push it around the rest of the day breaking the gold particles out of their matrix which might be quartz, iron pyrite, magnetite, clay, garbage, whatever has been identified to be gold bearing soil or "deposits".
Once you've got it broken up you run it through a water sluice so that the gold particles can drop to the bottom with the lighter stuff being washed away.
Somebody said you have to place the sluice at a 21 degree angle but I don't know.
