August 31, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 21 No Opal again, but have a Breakdown.

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Finished pulling the dirt that I wanted to get out, now I have a clean face to drill a new shot in tomorrow, so we will see what is in the next 4 feet. This is the new shot, I have already drilled it and loaded the bombs in the holes, the shot next door is still there for the most part and I will pull that when I am ready to put another shot there.

This is a sort of side view of the face and shot, there are 10 bombs in this shot under the level, you can see the nice ironstone level which is still there, at this stage there was a still a bit of trace in the level.

The roof at this point is 3 foot 3 inches above the level, which really is to high for me and makes for a lot of extra dirt when blow down, but as I said before because of safety reasons at this stage I have to take it down, hopefully this might change as we get into new ground, but only time will tell. You can see here on the right hand side of the photo, just under the top bomb that the gypsum is again quite thick, this makes the ground to strong for me to blow down with the one bomb up there so I have had to put a couple down lower to break it up and make it easier for the top bombs to do their job.

Fired the shot, pulled the fumes and went back down to check the level, except for a very small amount of trace the level was empty, bit disappointing but that opal mining, never know when and where it is going to be, so I lit the bombs in the roof 5 of them, went up and packed the equipment away and went home. Went into work and cleaned up again, as this shot had blown a lot of dirt down the drive, what is left of it where the pipes are kept, so had to be cleaned up again as I have to go down there to put things away, so need a clean floor, then I pulled some of the shot until I got tired and quit. After putting the equipment away, the reason I keep putting the gear away as we call it, is because of the niteshifters or thieves that go around at night and check your claim out to see if you are on opal, then they will put some shots in and steal it so you will never know what you have lost in value and they may also pinch any of your equipment that you have left down there, so I bring it all back up top with me and take it home. The equipment I use down under that I bring up when finished is, the Drill and Auger, which is worth some $750.00 to replace, the blacklight about $100.00 and the electric Jackpick about $700.00 to $800.00 to replace, so for a few minutes extra time every day it is better to bring these things home with me, although I have never been bothered by the niteshifters that I know about, there is always the first time. Had the day off to finish cleaning the opal that I have found over the last couple of weeks as some of it had the sandstone still on it, as some of the sandstone is quite strong it will not dissolve in the tumbler as the rest does, so must be taken off by hand, time consuming I know but must be done and is all part of the opal mining, then it has to be re-tumbled again to make sure that it is as clean as we can get it, as the Chinese Opal Buyers use nay excuse they can to bring the price down on you, and if it is not clean enough you will get lee and then as they have a lot of spare time on there hands they will clean up the opal so they can make more money out of you, sometimes when you are sitting in their room while they are looking at you opal you can hear a tumbler out the back working, cleaning opal.

Had the day off and went and got the Jimmy the Classer to come and class the opal for me so I could sell it, it was 12 o'clock by the time he had finished, he then rang a buyer to come over and have a look, this buyer did not like the price (which is not surprising) and he would not make an offer, then he left, Jim then went and got another buyer to come and have a look he also did not like the price and he left as well, so Jim went and I went out to find a buyer for the opal. I then went to a opal buyer just 2 houses up from me, a Greek Buyer, although the liked the opal and said that the new claim had potential for producing some good opal the pieces were a bit small for him and the price was also high, I told him that Jimmy the Runner as he know by also a Greek had classed the parcel, he said that Jimmy forgets that the market is down and had priced the parcel to high, then he pointed out what I should be able to get for the different bags, as they were 7 bags (grades) in the parcel, as a buyer I did not take his word too seriously. I went another 3 buyers all who said that the parcel was to high, but they all say that anyway and every time no matter what the price is, but none of them would even make an offer which means that something is wrong with the price, this was about 4.30 in the afternoon by this time, so I took the parcel to a friend of mine, that had put a price on some of my opal before after I had classed it and he looked at the parcel and said that is was priced 50% to high, so he re-classed the top 2 bags for me and told me to take out the baby chips and save them until I had saved about 100 ounces of them. So I went back home and re-bagged the top 2 bags which now became 4 bags and dropped out the baby chips and made out a new list on the weights and price put all the bags and list in a container and left it until tomorrow after I come home for work to try again. Went to work and pulled a lot more of the shot, I thought I would have finished it today but there was a bit to much for me as I have to pull some of the shot next door, the mound of dirt is to high and some of it was falling down so I have to get rid of some of it, so I will finish it off on Monday and then come home and pull out the radiator from the 4x4, oh yes I did not get the chance to pull it out as I said I would, trying to sell the opal etc took to much time.

When I came home I got the parcel and went out again, first I went to a buyer that I had already been to and knew he was interested in the Opal itself, but again he said that the price was to high, but did make an offer which was under half of what I was asking, so I left, then I went to another that I had not been to the day before and he said the price was to high, now bear in mind the parcel has now been dropped in price by 50%, so say it was $10,000 (not the real price) in the first place it would now be priced at asking price of $5,000, so I left that buyer without an offer, then I went to 2 more that live in the same house, both said the price was to high, on e did not make an offer and his cousin made an offer of half the asking price. Then I came back towards home and went to another buyer that lives just a street away and round a corner, I have never been to this buyer before and the only come here for about 3 months of the year and not all at one time, but for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, I showed them, although again they are separate buyers but stay at the same address, I suppose to make the rent a bit cheaper for them, anyway I was there for about 3/4 of an hour one of the buyers like the opal a lot and went through it many times looking at it, then he asked me the price for the parcel which I told him, them he made an offer which was 33% down and I rejected this and told him the parcel was worth more and he new it, he then came up another 10%, but I still wanted more, ( why not) But after a few minutes I could not get him to come up any more and sold it to him at his price as usual, which was 25% down on the asking price, but as I had put the price up $1000 over the classed price, I only lost $400 on the classed price, so all in all it was a good price I got, This shows you that the selling the opal is almost as hard as finding it in the first place and right now as the market is down a bit it also depends what you have for sale as they are very picky and some of the miners cannot sell what they have right now. Lucky my claim is producing good opal and these 2 buyers are interested in anymore opal that comes from my claim as they told me that my opal is good sound opal and most of it at the moment is on the green green/orange side, most of this parcel was of green opal. That Opal that I showed you in last weeks issue, that little parcel of red crystal I still have and will be putting on the net for sale, but from now on I will not be using Jimmy the Runner for classing any more opal foe me, I will be doing my own and then I will get my friend to put a price on it if he has the time, if not, I will wait or find someone else. Well again we have not done a lot of footage this week and we have not found any opal and there was not a lot of photos for a change, but next week I will do another shot on Tuesday, if there is nothing in that shot I will be leaving that shot dirt there after I have cleaned up the ball room and pull the shot next door and continue in that direction for a few shots, weather I find any opal or not as I have to get a drive going for some distance.

Finished pulling the dirt that I wanted to get out, now I have a clean face to drill a new shot in tomorrow, so we will see what is in the next 4 feet and I hope it is more than we found in the last shot. Go and fill up with fuel for the truck and generator, then off to work we go, as the face is ready for drilling as you can see below and you will also note how the face is a darker color than above the level, indicating that the face is damp, the stick that you see here is the one that I use for my direction but is also 5 feet in length and so shows you how far off the floor the level is and how much further to the roof which is 9 foot 3 inches high.

This is the rest of the shot to the right that I will have to pull when ready and if there is nothing in this shot then this is were I will be drilling the next shot.

This is the shot ready for having the bombs loaded and fired, as I said before there is no trace here at all in the level, but that does not mean that there will be nothing in there, I have drilled 3 holes in the roof but have not gone as high as before as I dont feel confident that I will be continuing any further after this shot and so have saved a couple of dollars can always drill, load and fire again if I need to later.

This is the shot after I have blown it, makes a lot of dirt don't it and I still have to blow down the roof yet which is a lot more dirt on top of this lot.

Well as I feared the level is empty, not even a chip of potch or anything else and as the direction is not right I will be going next door and pulling that dirt and probably some of this and trying in another direction for about 30 feet or so to the next junction that I have picked with my wires, of did I not tell you all that I do Divining with Brass Rods to find the faults and corners that might have opal around them.

Went into work to check the roof that was blow down yesterday, there was nothing there as well, so went to start the blower but had trouble getting the starter motor to turn over properly, first it would turn over but slowly and then it would not, but the solenoid was clicking in and out so I thought the battery leads were at fault as they were getting hot at the battery end and I have been having this problem for some weeks now. As the leads were burnt and very soft at the battery ends I thought that they were not carrying the power properly and this was effecting the starter motor in turning over, as you can see one of them was joined in the middle with a bolt, it was like this when I bought the blower some 10 years ago, but as it was underneath the vehicle I never saw it, so I have taken them off and will get new ones made up for me today.

Before I went home I pumped up the front end loaders tires with my new little compressor and air gauge, boy its a lot easier this way, I used to have to come out here with the 4x4 as I have a small air compressor under the hood which pumps up the tires in good time, this is no quicker but is more convenient as I can do more with compressor as it has a air tank which means I can use a air blow gun to clean out filters and the like, I could not do that before.

Then as it looks like rain in the sky, I decided to put some more dirt around the shafts that I use and around another one just behind the loader just in case.

Put the new battery leads on the blower, but these did not make any difference, except to my pocket $62.00 for these new ones, the starter motor did turn over very slowly and then it packed in all together, so I will pull the starter motor off tomorrow as I need to bring out my tool box, I also will change the blower belts as well they have had it well and truly.

Took the starter motor off, but could not remove the bottom rear bearing housings as I need to borrow a couple of 3/4 inch drive sockets to get them off, so came back into town and left the starter motor with the auto electrician as he could not check it straight away, when I went back 2 hours later, I was informed that it had burned out and was kaput!

Here you can see where it has burned out, it looks like it has got some moisture in it, probably during the storm that filled my claim with water in February, as it has been playing up from some weeks now, but I really thought it was the battery leads. Was going to go to work, but it was very windy and cold so decided to stay at home and do some work on the computer instead. Was sick this morning, looks like I picked up a 24 hour bug yesterday and after Pat had gone to work, I could not get warm even with the gas fire on, so I was back in bed by 11 o'clock this morning and did not get up until Pat came home at 3.15PM, she gave me some pills and within a hour I was feeling a bit better, had some chicken soup for dinner and finished this newsletter, which I thought would have to wait until tomorrow. Have ordered a second hand starter motor from down south should be here on Monday or Tuesday, then I will have to get the belts off and order them as they don't carry the quantity I need, which is 5, I have to bring one in so they can measure it for size before ordering, and I will also do a oil and filter change on the blower as well, then its done.

Well I am hoping that this week will be somewhat better than the last one, at least mentally, as that computer worm does tend to take it out of you mentally, maybe its the getting old thing I don't know, but the brain could do with a rest this week. Went on the field to install the second hand starter motor in the blower and to remove the belts off the fan pulley, but first I went to see the auto electrician about the starter motor, he had told me about making a connection on the starter motor across two terminals which makes it easier for the starter motor to operate under the conditions that we use it. You have to remember that we are using this diesel motor as a stationary motor for which it was not designed and the motor is always under load through the belts on the fan pulley, so when we start the motor it also has to turn the fan as well and as the motor gains revs so does the load on the engine and when starting the starter motor as well, we do not operate a clutch on the engine. Just as well I went to see him as I had the idea all wrong about this connection, I had to use a piece off the old starter motor and so had to go back home to get it, which was not to far as I am still in town, after I had got the part I was off to the field, only to find that when I got out to the blower I had left the tool box back at home, told you about the brain as we get older, so I just took the fan belts off and came home to order the new ones, which will be here in the morning, you can see how bad the old belts were below, in this condition they were slipping on the pulley and could not be tensioned anymore or they would have broken.

This is a close up shot of the bottom pulley, the bolts at the rear are a pain to get off, as I only have access through the front of the pulley to get then undone, which means that I have very little movement with the socket and can only turn the nut a 1/4 of a turn at a time, also not easy to re-grease this back bearing.

This shows you how the short drive shaft is set up on the engine's flywheel, this is a adapter plate bolted to the flywheel and then the drive shaft is bolted to that.

This is how the weather was today, not the kind that I want to go out and work in.

Today was much the same as yesterday, only it started to rain a bit later in the day, just after 1 pm in the afternoon, but looked like it would rain at any time. Took the 4x4 in to the mechanic this morning to get that Injection Pump looked at, as the radiator was clean and there is water all over the place here, we had a bit more rain than I thought, the sun is shinning this morning so it might dry the ground out a bit, I will have to stay at home to let it dry out on the field before I go out and do anything. The timing was out on the injection pump, he estimated somewhere between 8 and 10%, so this now should make the engine run cooler, I will have to put the Thermostat back in and take it for a run with the boat on the back so the engine runs under load, I have told Pat that we go for a run up the highway and have lunch to a place called Cagney Station about 154 kilometers from here, we will do it on a weekend when Pat has a day off. Went out to put the starter motor on but could not get the bolt holes to line up, after measuring and trying a few things I checked it along side the other housing which I had taken with me and here you can see the difference between the two, the red one is the replacement that I got and the front of it is larger. This stops me revolving the start motor so the bolt holes line up, so I had to come home and take it to the Auto Electrician who is going to change over the two solenoid housings for me and I will be able to pick it up first thing in the morning.

Picked up the starter motor, this morning. but we had a some more rain yesterday afternoon, followed by storm force winds for a few hours, which brought some dust in from where it had not been raining and as usual it made a mess of things as you can see by Pats little car window screen, it makes this mess on everything, I even had to wash the trucks windows before I could go out and get the starter motor this morning. As it rained again late yesterday afternoon, I will stay at home as there was quite a bit water lying on the track going out to the blower on the field, so I will give it chance to dry out some before going out again, should be alright by Monday if we do not get anymore rain in the meantime, but the forecast is for more rain sometime today, so lets hope it does not happen, I would like to get back to work Mining as soon as I have fixed things.

Pat had been out and washed her car and the 4x4 around lunch time, which was a waste of time because around 4pm the wind got up again and then this dust storm came followed by a bit of rain and so the vehicles were back to the state they where in this morning. Nothing much happed today, stayed at home letting things dry out and as the weather was alright today and the wind was up it should be good on the field tomorrow and the forecast is for fine weather, so I should get a bit done tomorrow, who knows I may even find a bit of color next week.

The tracks were all dry out on the field this morning, I don't think that it rained out there at all in this last lot of rain we had here on Saturday, which suites me fine, don't want anymore rain at all out there, ever! Put the starter motor on and wired it up, connected the battery lead or should I say I tried to connect the lead but it was shorting out, so decided to leave until later to find out what is wrong and get on with the re-greasing of the bearings. I did the bottom 2 which are the smaller of the 4, don't need big bearings down the bottom as they don't run at big revs, unlike the top ones they run over two and half times what the motor revs at, so when the engine is doing 1500 revs the fan would be doing about 4000 revs, so the fan needs to be balanced perfectly. When I took the caps off the top bearings and cleaned some of the old grease out of the top, I noticed that the bearing next to the fan housing had two ball bearings missing, part of the broken cage was in the top cap and the bearings must be in the bottom half of the housing, so here we are again broken down for a couple more days, this is a reasonable sized job for me as I work by myself and it is a few years back since I did this last.

Now I have to remove the fan off the shaft so I can remove the shaft and the 2 bearing housings to bring back into town and replace the broken bearing, so first I have to remove the fan housing cover to get to the fan and then remove it.

Here I have got the small elbow off the housing and the air pipe. (Part 1)

Now I have the fan housing cover off and you can see the fan inside.

This is a straight on shot of the fan, you can now see the 16 blades on the inside, this is very similar to your household vacuum cleaner, but on a much larger scale, you will se it a lot better tomorrow when I have it out and in the truck, this I will have checked for balance when I come back into town to fix the bearing as it is all done in the same workshop, I will replace the bearing myself, but the chap I buy the part off has the workshop and this is where I will fix it and he will do the balancing for me.

I have to remove this shaft below with everything that is on it once the fan is off from the other side, all I have to do is undo the bolts at the bottom and take the lot out, hope there is not any damage to the housing or I will have to replace that as well.

Here you can see the fan housing without the fan is and just the shaft sticking through.

Here is the fan out at last, it is 28 inches in Diameter, used to be 30 inches but when I got this fan made I had it cut down is size as this engine is a lot smaller than the original one which blew up on me and was a lot bigger in power than this one, this Perkins 6.351 is a 120 HP engine and produces only about 90 HP here as a stationery engine, the one that was in the blower when I bought it was a 280HP engine.

Funny how things seem to get heavier as you get older, I don't remember the fan being this heavy about 5 years ago, this shot gives you some idea just how big the fan is and to take this photo I had the camera sitting on the back of the winch electric motor.

Here is the 2 inch Dia bearing shaft, complete with bearings and 6 groove pulley, this is also a bit on the heavy side.

Here we are ready for heading back to town, will fix them up tomorrow all being well, the bearing is in stock and will be replaced tomorrow, but not sure if I can get Ross to balance the fan at the sametime as I am replacing the bearing, will have to wait and see.

I was very lucky today, because Ross got on to the job of re-balancing the fan as soon as was possible this morning, it was out of balance not by much he said, but this was probably enough to cause the bearing to start breaking down, here you can see him starting to remove one of the balancing weights that has been welded to the back of the fan.

From this angle you can see what is happing, the weight being removed is just a small piece of steel that has been welded in place, there are 6 of them on this fan, Ross is the person who built this fan for me in the first place, you can the shaft on the bench on the right.

Here Ross is starting to balance the fan, he uses a small magnetic weight to see just where to place the weight and how heavy the weight should be before welding one onto the back the fan for the final balancing, if you look at the blades here you can see that they are a bit shiner that the fan itself, this is because I welded the blades with hard-facing rods when the fan was built and re-welded then again a some time ago when some wear started to show on the blades, this adds extra life to the fan blades as the hard facing takes a lot longer to wear though than the ordinary steel, the fan is made out of, also make it a bit heaver too, as I use 54 welding rods the first time on this fan.

Here Ross is checking the balance of the fan, blade against opposite blade and you can see where he has welded the new weight on, I also think the reason the fan went out of balance is because of this hard face welding I did, as the weld cannot be exactly the same on all blades nor can it be totally smooth, so although Ross balanced the fan then, I think that where the welding had a high spot here and there, it has been worn off with the dust passing over the blades which is very abrasive and therefore putting the fan out of balance slightly, actually it is this dust that wears out the fans, especially the Alanite Dust.

Here I have pulled the bearing housings off and have cleaned them, you can also see the new bearing ready to be fitted, I said before that I was going to do this but I forgot that I have never fitted a bearing on this shaft and so will let Ross do it, I need it to be done right, first time, better to pay for it than do it wrong.

Ross is doing up the tension on the new bearing, but it will have to done again on the field before I can put any grease in the bearing, Ross will put a drop or two of oil in the bearing, then I will start the engine and give the bearing a run to settle it in, Ross will then re-adjust it, then I can pack it with the special grease we use.

Out to the field and replace the bearing shaft and try to fit the new belts, also dropped the oil and changed the oil filter on the engine will put the oil in tomorrow, but when I went to put the belts on I could not get the nuts on the bolts nuts on the tighten the belts up, as the bearing housing was to far off the plate that is was bolted to, thought that I had got the wrong sized belts so I took them back off and came back to town and doubled checked the size, but they were the right size. Went back out to put the belts on again, as I have not done this for 7 years, the memory is not that good and so we messed around again for a while, as you can see in the photo I was using a piece of wood as a lever to lift the bottom belt pulley up so I could get the belts under the bearing housing and than I would place them on the top pulley as well as the bottom pulley. But this put the bottom pulley at very difficult angle and the belts were not sitting right on it, in fact a couple of them were nearly off the side and I could not get the nuts on the rear bolts, so I had to take the belts off the top pulley again, but left them hanging on the bottom pulley, then I put the bolts back in the bearing housings and tightened the nuts up finger tight, then I tried to roll the first belt on the outside grooves but I could not get the belt into the first groove on the top pulley as it was to tight. So I then unscrewed the nuts until they were only on the bolts by about two threads, this then gave me enough play to just manage to roll the first belt into the first groove on the top pulley, at last we had it, now the rest was easy, all I had to do now was roll the belt over, first on the top and then on the bottom until I had got the belt over to the last groove next to the fan housing to my right, then we start with the next and so on until I had all 5 on and in place and to think because I had forgotten about this it had caused me all that extra work and for nothing. This type of work really gives my knees hell and they were hurting by the time I had finished this job, but the belts are on and the bearing housings are bolted up tight, the fan is back on and bolted up, and I have put the oil in the motor, tomorrow I have to bring Ross out to run the new bearing in and then he will re-adjust it. But I did not put the fan housing back on as yet as the top pulley where I have my hands has to be brought back out to the left, this will be done when Ross is running in the new bearing and then adjusting it again if necessary and if I need to tap the shaft from the fan side to knock the shaft out a bit than I can as the fan cover is off. After Ross has finished the job I have to bring him back into town, then I will go back out and finished the job which is only to put the fan housing cover back on and that small elbow, seal up any cracks with tape so they don't suck any air in and I should be ready for working back underground on Monday, I did start the engine after I had finished today just to get the oil pressure up and through the oil filter, could not run it to long as the new bearing has no oil or grease as yet, so I only run it about 12 seconds twice.

But I have to say, the new starter motor really turns the engine over very quickly, better than the old one and now the starter motor is under more pressure than before because of the tension of the new belts, which will also make a difference underground pulling the dirt because I will have more vacuum, I defiantly had belt slippage with the old belts, which affected the vacuum, so now it will also be a lot easier in pulling dirt as well.

Took Ross out to the blower and we run the engine to settle the new bearing in with a drop of oil in it, it was fitted perfectly and did not need to be moved or adjusted any more, but I had to adjust the bottom fan pulley to bring the belts back in line, then we put the fan housing etc back on and run the engine again, but this time under a bit of load as the fan is now sucking some air and this puts the bearing and engine under some strain. The new bearing was still running cold and had not moved so now the job is done, all I have to do now when I go to work on Monday is put the grease in this bearing and a little bit in the one in front of it, then I will be back underground pulling dirt at last, will be nice to be back to normal and hopefully find some opal in the near future, now I will take Ross back to his workshop in town and knock off for the day, Total cost of this lot above is $1024.50, so now we have to try and pay for it. Tuned in again next month as we are now back in action and very keen to get down and get dirty so who knows what we will find..... Lots of Color we hope 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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