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October 10, 2002.
Opal Mining Update No 1 Drilling Shafts for Opal |
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Here are some photo's of how we do drilling shafts here, some are for prospecting which is just looking to see if they can cut (find) some material and some are for miners like me so I can join the two together and start mining, you probably will have not seen any of this before, so I hope you find them interesting, there are 44 Photo's in all, so they will be in four Newsletters
Photo 2, 3 and 4 are of the drill just starting off a new shaft, Drill-4 Pic, and what the Full View of a Calweld looks like.  |
Drill-2 Pic, and is just starting to drill a shaft, this is a Greek Fellow called Nick.
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Drill-3 Pic, and you can see how they dump the dirt from the bucket.
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Drill photo's 5, 6 and 7 are of a friend of called George, he does not want to come and drill shafts for me, because as you can see here he is opening up a large shaft for putting his own tunneling machine down so he can start mining for opal.
Drill-5 Pic, as you can see there are 2 shafts, which we need to open up with, in Georges case he need one normal shaft and one large shaft so he can put his tunnel machine down to start mining.  |
Drill-6, a close up shot of the large shaft still being drilled, they are called them Tunnel Machine Shafts.
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Drill-7, Another shot from front on so you can see how close the 2 shafts are.
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Drill photo's 10, 11 and 12 show you the reamers that are put onto the bucket to open the shaft up to 2 meters in Dia, you can the what they call the reamers here, the offsider is removing them.
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Drill 17 with the bucket in and drill 13 you can see the big shaft on its own, you will notice here that one reamer is longer than the other.
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This puts less strain on the drill when reaming out the hole.
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Photo's 14 and 15 this is how they dump the dirt on the ground from the bucket.
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As you can see is a very dusty job and if the wind is in the wrong direction, even worse.
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George should be putting the tunnel machine down this Thursday, so I will keep my eye on him everyday so I can get pics on this event, nobody has this type of stuff on the net so I may make up a special page on all of this later. (This is it)
Some more pics will be coming on putting the tunnel machine down, there are about 30 or so pics, so I will send them in 3 newsletters, you should find them interesting. Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some more good photos to show you in the next issue and maybe some of Good Looking Opal and lots of it, I am still hoping that this will be a good year for us in mining, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world as far as Opal Mining goes. Stay Tuned for the next Issue, who knows what I will have to report. Until the next issue.........  and wish me lots of LUCK.
Cya Later, Stuart Bird. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here! |
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