December 15, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 27 Computer Problems for a change and more hard work.

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If you remember from last the end of last week, the first thing I had to do today at work was to pull the dirt for blowing down the roof, this should have taken me about an hour and then I would have drilled the holes for the next shot and so on and so forth. But as usual, things did not go as planed, I had nothing but trouble in pulling the dirt, all I had was one blockage after another, I started pulling the dirt around 8.30am and by 11.50am I had not pulled 3/4 of it, so I quit and went home, enough is enough for one day. I was starting to think that there was a leak in the system, that is there could have been sucking air in through the hopper, if I had developed a hole through rust (it is a old hopper) or if one of the 11 clamps that holds the pipes together that also has a rubber under the clamp, these run from the yellow hopper all the way down to the ground, only needs a small leak to suck air in so that I do not get full vacuum, this makes the dirt travel up the pipes to slowly and this is what causes the blockages. Will have to check out what I can do tomorrow without having to pull up the pipes from down the shaft, meanwhile no shot today. Again I had to start the day with finishing yesterday work, so was not in a good mood to start with and it did not improve within the first 1/2 hour, the first thing I did was to start the blower and then climb the dump under the hopper, as it is high enough now for me to stand on and puts my head almost level with the bottom of the hopper, with the blower running up here I can hear if there is any air being sucked in and there was, a little through the lid or door as you might call it, this is normal and is sealed very quickly when I start pulling dirt, apart from that there was no other leak. I then went downunder and started work, but again it was nothing but trouble for about the first 15 minutes and after that it came good, so I think it may have been a long thin piece of gypsum that got stuck length ways in one of the pipes that goes up the shaft, anyway what ever it was had gone and the vacuum was back to normal and we carried on with ease (about time) so I finished getting rid of this dirt and then after getting ready by removing the telescope and the first small length of pipe I used next to it, I had to have at least 12 to 15 feet distance between the end of the first pipe and the shot face. This is so that when the shot goes off, especially the opener (first bomb) which throws a lot of dirt back down the drive and once in a blue moon a piece of dirt will block the pipe at the beginning, then I have to go in the fumes with the hand pick and unblock it holding my breath, or it will not get rid of the fumes, so by having the pipe end back this distance cuts down the chance of this happing, anyway we have drilled most of the holes below and you can see the 2 in the roof also some gypsum and there is some concrete there as well.

This shows you the level, (still messed up, at this point) and the white powder on the floor from drilling into the alanite in the roof, I drilled the 2 shot holes in the roof almost flat or level, just above the gypsum not wanting to go to high this time.

A friend of mine asked me how I make the bomb (sausage) stay in the hole when I drill it up in the roof on a angle, so I thought this was a good idea to show you all how it is done, after I have made the bomb and put the fuse on it (I make them all first) if I am going to go up top after I have lit the fuse I will put longer fuses on that are 6 foot long, as I normally use 3 foot fuses when I stay underground, then I will fold the fuse back along the side of the bomb like it shows below.

Then I put it in the hole like below, the fuse lying along side of bomb like this adds extra pressure and grip to stop the bomb from moving or sliding from the hole.

From here I just use the tamp stick and push the bomb to the back of the hole and any fuse that is left hanging outside of the hole I just roll up and push inside, leaving about 3 or 4 inches outside of the hole for me to light, but using the short fuse is also alright as the bomb does not normal move even when the all of the 11 or so bombs go off underneath, providing that the angle is not to steep that I drill in the roof, if it on the steep side I would have to ram some paper in behind it to make sure it would not move, just under this hole is the concrete, very hard stuff and when you scratch it with your finger nail that's what it feels like, concrete, you can also see the brown gypsum in the sandstone, so all of this makes the roof very strong.

So I fired the shot (11 bombs) and so far all went well, pulled the fumes, cleaned up a bit and then turned off the blower and got everything ready for me to check the level, but again there was nothing to talk about so I only knocked down part of the level that I was interested in as they was nothing in there so I did not waste anymore of my time, so I looked at the roof and worked out that the 2 bombs would not bring it down, there was to much for them and giving that there was some gypsum and also concrete just under the alanite I would need another bomb in there, so I would do this tomorrow, after I had pulled the shot that I had just done. Here you can see that I have drilled another hole and they have bombs in them, you can see how much fuse is hanging out of the hole, the holes are 4 foot deep and the fuse 3 foot and the bomb is about 15 inches long.

Here is the shot after blowing down the roof down, the alanite is getting thicker here and the problem with it also is that when you blast in the stuff it turns everything white.

This shows you how the drive looks from about 20 foot back and how I have placed the telescope after the shots have gone off to pull the fumes out before I can start to pull the dirt and get the face ready for the next shot.

Anyway went to get on with the job of getting that roof shot out and again I had my problems in getting blockages again, although this dirt is as day as a bone, the pipes already have a bit of a lining inside them from the damp dirt I have already pulled for the main shot it self and this is causing a lot of drag and slowing down the dirt traveling up the pipes which is causing this problem. I had not been pulling the dirt long, when I had a blockage that I could not get rid off from down the bottom, this would have been the 3rd in about 10 minutes, so I had to go up top and undo the top clamp on the top elbow and the blockage was about 9 inches up from there, after I had put the clamp back on and restarted the blower I was sitting on the seat to go back underground when I just happened to look up at the hopper and saw that the door was wide open, the springs that hold the door about half open had some how come off and the door is too open to wide like this for the vacuum from the fan to pull the door shut or so I thought.

These are the 2 springs and they were on the dump, so I climbed up the dump again and I can just reach where they fit, I may have some trouble with the top one, not sure, but as it was 11.30am and was getting hot and the flies are a nuisance in the heat, so I will attempt to fit them back on first thing in the morning, depending on how long it takes if I can do it at all and getting the rest of the dirt out, I don't know if I will have time to do a shot or not, so I will play it by ear and see what turns out.

Went to work with the intension of fitting the springs back on the hopper but when I climbed the dump I found that I could not reach the top bracket where the spring slips through a drill hole, I was at least a foot short, did not realize that it was so far up. But the wind was up and blowing towards the back of the hopper door making it swing about 2 inches in ether direction, so I started the blower and put some revs on and the door shut, so I figured that I could pull dirt and if I could not close the hopper door after I had dumped some dirt I could always come up top and climb the dump and give it a helping hand, may take a bit longer but I would get some work done. So down I went and started pulling the roof shot and a little that I had left from the main shot, well it did not go good right from the start, nothing but trouble again with it not sucking properly and I had to mess around trying to get whatever it was unblocked, took about 1/2 hour before it started to work well and then we were off, like nothing had happened. Finally got all of the dirt out, but took me a lot longer than I expected, I had blown the roof to high and put to much dirt down, will have to drill a bit lower in the next shot, only thing I don't like is there is a lot of alanite up there, it is getting quite thick now and I do not trust this like the sandstone, as some of it is soft and some of it is hard and that spells trouble, I would like to get above the alanite, but that requires to much work.

This is the face now, ready for drilling again, looks like snow all over the place, you can also see that the ironstone level is starting to settle down, still no trace in it and I have about 2 shots (8 foot) to go until I reach the next fault above me, so I do expect to find any trace in that distance, in between these two faults which is only about 30 feet and it has not been good for opal or trace so far but who knows where opal is, there may be a chance to the left running parallel with these faults and down the middle, but this will be some time next year, one shot back from this face is where I will be drill the next shaft and it wont be long before I start opening up sideways for this by starting new drives on ether side of this drive, so the shaft will be in the middle of 4 drives. (I hope)

I did not mention to you guys before, but last week, Friday in fact I blew my main computer, (this one) and all of this newsletter has been done on the laptop, which I am not used to (this is only for when I am on holidays) and today my computer arrived back so I will be staying at home to get it all of the programs back in and get up and running again. Off again and still have a little more to do on the computer, downloading the service packs from Microsoft as you know takes some time and I also blew up the keyboard and the power lead (which is what caused all of this trouble in the first place) to the cradle for the external drive, the cradle did not arrive today and I cannot put some info back in this computer without it, including this newsletter, which is the editor FrontPage, so I will have the cradle tomorrow morning (I hope) then I can finish everything off. Day off as usual and the cradle did get here this morning and now I am all back to normal, all programs are back in the computer, which is about 10 times faster that the old one, at least it can wait for me now, instead of me waiting for it and I will be back at work underground tomorrow and we will be doing a shot, but first I must get the hopper door to close when I want it to, so I will show you how I do this next week, until then.

Well I told you at the end of last week that I had to make some temporary repairs to the hopper lid as I could not reach high enough to put the springs back where they belong, so what I have here is a drill a length of 6mm rope that is 140 feet long to make sure that I have enough and a hook of sorts, the hopper lid has 2 pieces of angle iron welded the outside of the lid for strength, I will drill a hole in this angle iron and put the hook in it then connect the rope to it and run it down the uprights that has the hopper on the end.

As you can see it worked out quite well and I only have to give it a little tug and then the vacuum grabs hold of it and pulls it shut, the only thing I don't know about is how this will stand up to the dirt falling over it when I dump the hopper, but right now that is the least if my worries, so long as I can pull dirt and when the dump is up high enough I will climb up and fit the springs, but for now there is no rush.

The arrows show you the rope being feed down to the hand winch, from there it will go down the shaft, along with the rest of the hand controls.

Here is how I control the blower from underground, the shut down cable is linked into the watch dog, that is the red box that will shout the blower engine down if the engine overheats or if the oil pressure drops, its a safety device that I would not like to be without especially now the summer is coming.

I got to start work around 9.30am and I did drill and fire a shot, after pulling the fumes and cleaning up I set myself up to check the level, but when I started with the jackpick the ground was so hard I gave up after about 15 minutes and I could not light the bombs in the roof as the now it is to thick for the bombs to do there job and to light them would be a waste of money, normally when I check the level I would knock down at least 6 to 9 inches of the roof and I drill the holes thinking this is what I am going to do, now this has not happened it has left to much up there.

So I will pull most of the shot (if I can) and then I will re-drill the holes about 6 inches lower and move the bombs and then set them off, you see the ground above the level, all that light brown material just under and mixed in with the white stuff (alanite) well all of that is concrete and the sandstone mixed in with the ironstone level is interwoven with gypsum so all in all, the ground is very solid and strong. Well I got most of the shot pulled with only the normal problems but for the most part it all went well, when I got level with the roof, I pulled some of the pipes back and then re-drilled the holes in the roof, but about 6 inches lower and then moved the bombs down, then I lit them and blew the roof down with no problems.

I then pulled most of the dirt that was left in the drive, so I got some of the face clean, then I finished, I will not continue this drive anymore until I have drilled a shaft here and move the blower on it sometime next year. What I will do now, is to bring down the tape measure and compass and measure the distance from the pipes to where I want the shaft to connect in the drive, then from the shot face looking back to the pipes I will take a compass reading looking along the tape measure, this will give me an accurate reading up top, then I will go up top and with the wires ( I divine with them) I will find the center between the two faults (about where that arrow is) and then run the tape measure out from the top elbow like it shows with the dotted line, then looking back at the elbow with the tape measure pulled tight I will move side ways until I get the compass reading I had underground, walk back along that line until I get to the distance out I want and mark it with an old tire and that is where the shaft will be drilled, spot on we hope, this will connect in-between the 4 drives.

On the way to work this morning the muffler fell of the truck again, this time the rear bracket has broken (rubber) there must be a lot of vibration and as the muffler had nothing to hold it up at the back (don't know when this broke) the weight of the muffler got to much for the pipe and it broke in half, as I was near the claim I keep going, but I will be off again tomorrow while it gets repaired again, I have asked the mechanic to suspend the back of the muffler with chain as this will not break and hopefully will last. When I get back to work underground, the first thing I will do is to put on what we call the opening up auger, it is a short auger only 16 inches in length, allowing me to drill inside a blind shaft, this is what we call them when they are not connected to any drive or have not been opened up yet, then I will go down the drive and mark where the shaft should connect, I will then drill 3 shot holes near the floor going inwards to the side of the drive like the arrows show below. I say 3 holes on each side, it could be more, then I will make up some baby bombs and blow them, this should give me a reasonably straight face for me to drill a shot ether side of the drive, I will blow there to shots at the same time, you know what I mean I will light them together, so that the roof stays up as normal and I can check the level after, just in case, that will be 24 bombes to go off, takes about 1 minute or less to light them this will give me 30 seconds or a little more to get round the corner to safety.

As usual I will pull the fumes and if I have time I will check the level, but I doubt it as this is a big job for me, I think that I will be going home after I have lit the bombs and they have gone off, then it will be safe for me to come up the shaft and as the fumes do not come to far past the end of the pipe down the drive, providing it has not got blocked, if so I will have to unblock it, sometimes a big piece of sandstone wedge's in the pipe, nothing the hand pick cant handle, so long as you hold your breath. When all of this has been done level checked I will pull the dirt to clean out the drive and I may or may not pull the lot and drill and fire again, putting me 2 shots on ether side, don't know I will play it by ear, depends on how I feel, then after this I will be drilling near the shaft with the ladders again and putting a drive in running parallel to the fault that I first found the opal on or near. Off, as I explained the truck is in again with muffler problems, hopefully it will be ready late this afternoon for me to pick up, but I went on the field with the 4x4 to see if I could find the tail pipe, which I did not, but I wanted to see how the bracket had broke, but somebody had picked it up yesterday as I did not see it on the way hone ether, it had a new clamp on it and people around here are scavengers, they pick up anything and everything that is metal, we call then bower birds, it is a Australian bird that collects items and keeps them. When I was on the field I passed a miner that I know, called Ivan, he has a blower truck like mine, but in better condition its an old left hand drive Mercedes Benz fully imported and mine was built in 1942, so it is the same age as me, anyway I was talking to Ivan and he was asking how I was going where I was getting opal and he told me that he was not happy where he was (he has been here 3 times on this claim) he had found $3000.00 worth of opal in the time he has been there, (this time) and it has cost him $4000.00 so he has gone backwards $1000.00, but it could have been worse I can tell you.

My hopper is bigger than Ivan's, but he has a bigger blower engine, a Cat V8 so he has more power than me and more vacuum which I would like and he works a lot harder than me, he will do 2 shots in a morning where I do one every 2 days, only he doing door way drives or prospect drives we call them, they are the same width as a doorway in your house and just a bit higher, they put 2 bombs wide by 4 high and one in the roof, very narrow drives and easy to pull dirt from, me I like them a bit wider.

The truck was ready for me by 4.30 yesterday afternoon so I was able to go to work today and the first thing that I did was to go underground and measure to the shot face which was 49.6 feet out from the pipes, then I look back along the tape measure and take a compass reading, then I went back up top and divine with the brass wires I have to find the lines of the faults so I could find the middle of them as this is where I want to drill the next shaft, they were much closer than I thought only 19 feet, where I got 30 feet from I don't know, no wonder the level did not settle down and was all over the place. Below I am using the bronze wires to find the edges of the faults, then I make scuff marks with my boots so I get a line on it.

Here I am measuring the distance and taking the compass reading, then I will put that tire on the spot to mark where I want the shaft drilled, which will be some time next year at least, I will not be moving the blower until I have worked out the area where I am working right now.

Here is the drill with the short auger on it, it is only 12 inches long, but including the shank it is 16 inches long, this is what we use when we first open up a shaft. Here are the baby bombs as we call them, they are only just over half a full one, but still pack a punch I can tell you, don't want to be anywhere near them when they go off.

Here the shot holes have been drilled and loaded with the baby bombs, this will give me a reasonably straight and square face to drill the next shots with.

This is after the shot, about a minute after, thought I would show you some of the dangerous fumes that would kill you if you got caught in them for and could not escape.

This below is an article in out local rag about the dangers of the fumes, so I thought I would let you read it, this is put in the paper about this time every year to remind miners about this danger, don't forget that some miners die or leave here and other people come and replace them and have to learn this trade if you can call it that.

This is where I will drill the next shaft in this direction, it is 40 foot out from the pipes at the bottom and then I will drill another shaft 35 foot further on when I have extended the drive past that point and I hope to be able to reach that shaft 97 feet away, before I drill again.

At the back of me and towards the main highway is the Greek Gully, this was so called because in the early days in the late fifties and sixties some of the Greek miners used to live out here on the field, here is a bulldozer starting to do a open cut or as we call them a dozer cut, to what depth he will go I do not know.

He is about 3/4 way across the claim, they are not supposed to push any dirt outside of there claim boundaries, but some do, you can the ground in the background has been disturbed before and I know for a fact where he is now has been done before and had the dirt pushed back over where he is working, so what he expects to find I do not know.

This is a better photo as he is at the end of his run and as he goes deeper, where he is right now will get higher, but this photo gives you a good look at the workings in the background, some is in the gully and some are on the normal flat ground, my claim and blower is behind me and to the right a little.

This is a really good view of my blower from across a little gully that I am working next to and have the hopper hanging over, the yellow circles represent the old timers square shafts that they dug down by hand, some times taking between 2 or 3 weeks to do.

This is a friends blower on the way out to the main road, Slobo is his name and he tells me that he is not doing to good here, the claim has been worked before so he is doing a bit of pillar bashing (checking the pillars that have been left in for safety) or a bit of driving (making some new drive in virgin ground if there is any left or he may be coming up a level.

Drilled 26 shot holes, drilled 14 holes on the left and 12 holes on the right which is going towards the major slide (fault) then made up the bombs, loaded them put things away, went up top to start the blower then came down and lit the shots, which gave me almost 40 seconds to get round the corner to safety, this is the result of the 2 shots, then I went home, will pull the dirt tomorrow.

This is the shot on the right, I cannot take a photo of the left because this shot threw the dirt across and the dirt is piled too high, but I pulled a bit of the dirt to make sure that all of the fumes were out and then I climbed the dump and checked the level in the wall just to see if they was any trace, you never know and to my surprise there was a bit of very thin colored trace in the wall on the left hand side, was all over the place, not in just one straight thin line, so again it had not made properly, still it was trace and that is something, what we say "the ground is talking to me"

This is how I bring all of my gear up the shaft, the bag I would like to say is full of opal but it isn't, it is half full of dirt that has the trace mixed in with it, I spent a couple of hours jack picking the level and this is the result, now I just take it home and put in the tumbler for about 3 or 4 hours and check then it in the cutting room, see if I have made any money today, which would be nice.

I will be driving towards the circle below when I have finished the 2 drives I have just started which will be in about 2 weeks from now or sooner, just 2 more shots in each direction and then I am finished, there anyway, then I will start here, opal for sure.

Day off as usual , but looking forward to next week I have a lot of hard work in front of me, but when I have finished these drives it will be a crossroad of 4 drives and if I have measured right and I have, it is the compass reading that makes the difference, between the shaft being spot on or out of center and to one side, but we will have to wait and see the result of that. 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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