June 15, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 17 Back to Normal at last!

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This week at last is the end of the WET. Well again last week I told you that this week would be the last if my mate turned up for me and he did, although I had to have Tuesday off we finished the job early on Wednesday Morning. My little mate Hans did well as the mud was not that sloppy, the water had just about gone downunder and I did not have enough to add to the wet dirt to make it easy for him to empty the bucket, so I was hearing a lot of banging up top as he was trying to get it all out of the bucket, but he did a great job as it could not have been easy for him. This is the last of the wet dirt for now, there is more down there but as you will see below it is on the left and right side of me and I will take that out a bit at a time when I am pulling a shot, then I can mix it in with some reasonable dry stuff, this will make pulling a shot take a bit longer, but is only for 4 or 5 shots I hope.

This photo shows you the path and the wall I have cleared to make the next shot, the floor is very clean but still a bit wet underfoot here, wont take much to cover it with some dry dirt, jackpicked from the roof above as I check out some trace.

This is the dirt and some of the wall from the last shot I did before I got all of that water down there, there is a lot to remove and is very wet down the bottom.

This is a pic of the dirt on the left that is also very wet down the bottom.

This is about what we call Feeders, there come down from the roof and sometimes carry opal or potch (material) in them, these two carried both in places but only a bit here and there, but did put it in the level, these can make into verticals and good opal.

This shows you how the feeders lead into the level and the material in the level.

This shows you where the water got up to and gain the feeders and the opal level.

Here the feeders are carrying some material right down to the level.

Here I have struck a very small pocket of color, now I will take it down with the hand pick and hope that I will keep going, get bigger and make some real money.

This is all that came from that small pocket, it is opal and is better than nothing.

Again I have open up some material in this feeder and there is a bit of opal that is green and red here, we will see what it gives us now.

Two pieces of opal came from above, as the opal is on a angle in the wall it has laid down the opal in lines or bars as we call then here, this is how a lot of vertical opal is formed.

This is just a large piece of potch and came from right next to the piece of opal above, funny how mother nature decides which is to be color and which is not.

This is the material in the level and just to the right of where I am going to make the next shot, who knows what lies behind this.

This is the two pieces of opal that I mentioned in the 3rd photo above, this I took up top in the sun when I finished work, you can see very clear how the opal has been laid down in lines, the top piece is broken off the back of the bottom piece, all this above I have done with the electric jackpick on Thursday, tomorrow I will do the first shot.

Shot Day at last, the holes took me about 1.5 hours to drill as the ground really has not changed much and the water only penetrated about 5 inches gave or take and the ground is still the same old wet ground that it was before, I drilled 9 holes for the shot and 6 holes for the relief holes all were drilled 3 foot 6 inches deep except for the opener which is drilled to 3 foot deep. This is the roof above the last shot after being blown down, I had already drilled the 3 holes before I went on holidays and got water down, the level at the back is empty of material at this point, may be some in the next shot.

This is the shot, done you can see the shot holes at the back, which should not be there, but it would seem that with the ground being wet for about 5 inches in as the first 2 or 3 middle shots went off some of the face fell off and pulled the fuses and the bombes forward about 12 inches and so all of the shot again did not come out as planed. You can see on the left the level is very thick, but there is no material visible here at this time, to the left we have some material and a bit of color to start with.

Here you can see the material in the level and the bit of color, to early to say opal.

Here you can see the new drive to the left and the old drive which I have to forget about for a while, until I can get the wet dirt out, but I have plenty to do in front of me.

As I blew the roof down over the old drive, it also blew down the left hand corner of the level in the shot I had just done, because I light the fuses after I have lit them for the shot so the roof on this side blows down last, and is sitting on top, so if there is anything in the roof I wont have buried it. This is part of the material in the level that got blown down when the roof over the drive to the left got blown down, this is only potch again, the story of my life at the moment potch, there is a lot more in the dump that I will dig out as I never know when this level is going to throw color so I have to take everything and check it out after tumbling it.

Here you can see some of the potch in the dump, underneath there is more to come, but no opal that I saw, but I don't check every piece as I also find some with the blacklight and then all of the potch or opal just looks white so I just throw it in the bag.

Friday night we had a bit of rain drop by, not much but it rained on and off for about 1/2 hour and this Rainbow came in, I have never seen a double one before so I thought it worth a photo to show you and then I look to the right to see if that end of the rainbow was coming down anywhere near where my claim is on 11 mile, but no it was a long way short, oh well I will have to wait for the next one, few and far between here.

Went to work and the first thing I did was to set up the bottom pipe and small elbow down the bottom ready for pulling a bit of dirt, thought I would clean up around the bottom of the shaft I go down and then some before I check the level and see if its payday. This is opal as you can see below, this is where those 2 opal stones that I showed you earlier came from, again is this going to lead to something special!

Sorry about the yellow color, but I can tell you that trying to hold a light, a piece of opal and the camera is not easy, looks like I had the camera to far behind the light and the sensor did not let the flash go off, still learning looks like, I had held the hand light between my knees and while looking in the view finder did not notice that the flash did not go off or I would have taken another photo. Any way this is the king stone from the opal pocket above, again just a little one, this is skin to skin opal and I am not complaining really just the ratio of opal to potch at the moment is not in my favor.

This is a piece of roof that fell down and it had some opal and potch on it, the bottom is the roof part, so it would have been the other way round in the roof.

This is the outline of a shell, this is no good even as a specimen, but it does show me that there may be some shells around so will have to keep my eyes open, where this opal and potch is forming is called a squibby level, may have told you that before, this means that it is not the main level but a false one and is running about 2 feet or so under the main level, so this came from under the main level where those feeders are coming from and above the squibby level.

Again a small pocket of opal, you don't know how much you will have until you have taken it all down, you can see one of the feeders on the right.

This is the opal that I got out of that pocket, not much but better than nothing at least it is paying expense's so far.

This is what I can expect a lot more of in the next few days or even weeks as I take this wet ground out, this was about 10 minutes into cleaning up this morning, you can see the wet ground builds up on the side of the top elbow and as the opening gets smaller it restricts the size of the bigger pieces of dirt until one gets stuck. When I get to clean up a bit more on the bottom and I put the large 90% elbow on then I will have two of these elbow to clean at one time, this makes for harder work and make the pulling of the dirt a longer job than normal, but I will have this as long as I am mining here in this wet ground, not just because I have had water in, one of the reasons that I left the old claim right next door was because of this wet ground.

Below is the opal that I have got from this shot, there is 5 & 1/2 ounces here and I have some potch and color about the same weight, the chips I put in another jar and when it is full I will sort in large and small chips.

Again the level is throwing some very nice color, it has red and green opal in it, thick and thin but the real big pieces are potch which is very heart breaking when you see what could have been, so far I have pulled out over 400 ounces of that over 300 ounces have been potch, so you see why opal is hard to find and a gem stone even harder. Well this week has been in my books anyway, a Great Week for a change, I have really enjoyed myself getting back to normal again, well except for drilling the shot holes, but that is going to be the same every time so I had better get used to it. I know that I complain a lot about getting all of this potch, but that's opal mining and we will always complain about finding potch instead of opal, because opal in money and potch is worth nothing and when you see the potch that has come from here already if it all had been the kind of opal that I have found already, I would have at least 1 million dollars, so you see why I complain about potch.

Has not been a bad week as far as mining goes, not made any money this week, I know that a lot of you still think that us opal miners are rich and that Patricia goes to work here at the Mud Hut Motel as a housemaid just to fill in the spare time on her hands while I am out on the opal field making my millions. Dream on, is all I can say, if I was self supportive in this game Patricia would be with me again underground making my bombs for me, Pat makes a great bomb and is a big help downunder, but right now she has to work to support me in my quest looking for the big pocket of opal so we can retire to the life of luxury by the beach somewhere.

Pulled the last shot and also some of the wet dirt on both sides of me, this takes me longer as you know and I have to do as I need to get rid of all the wet stuff as soon as I can, then I can drive in any direction when I want. Here I am drilling the roof above the last shot as I need to get rid of it and I also need the very dry stuff to help me get rid of this wet ground as well that is left, I will not be able to get rid of it all with this shot but quite a bit of it, if you are wondering what the stick is for, its a broom handle and I have it marked off in 6inches so I know what depth I have drill a hole and also to guide me in the direction so I can have the holes drilled in parallel with each other if needed.

This photo shows you what the drill and the auger looks like this auger is 3 foot 6 inches to the end of the auger itself, then we have the shank and the drill in all about 5 foot in length and I have another Auger that is 4 feet in length and stronger.

Here we have the squibby level and the main level which now is just above the squibby, in the main level there are patches of Gypsum here and there, under some of this gypsum is traces of pure white potch, will it lead to anything?

This is part of the roof that I am going to bring down, here you can see some very nice and clean gypsum, the sandstone here is very hard and when the roof had been blow down it came down in large pieces that had to be broken up with the aid of the electric jackpick, without this tool I would have been in trouble as I don't have the strength to last long in swinging a hand pick to break it up, it takes a lot of energy out of you doing this. I have developed a leak in the top tank in the radiator on the blower and it had to be fixed, I had noticed a leak from there for some time but had never took a close look at it as it looked like it was coming from the overflow pipe near the cap, but I was wrong (again) so I will have to bring out the tools to take it apart as this is an old Bulldozer Radiator and the top and bottom tanks are bolted on with 38 bolts top and bottom, but I only need the top tank, will take it off tomorrow after I have blow the roof down.

Brought all of the tools that I would need to remove the tank and also a electric grinder just in case I may need one, also put everything else that I needed for the days work or so I thought, went to make the bombs and found that I had forgot to put any Cordex in the truck to make the bombs with, the blue things on the ground in the top photo with Pat making the bombs, so many things to remember and do and such a small brain to do it with. Anyway I undid the bolts along one side with a bit of a struggle as they were a bit rusted and then on each side there is 4 studs that screw into the bottom part and the first two that I tried broke the head off so I stopped right there, as if I broke anymore off it was going to be a major job in fixing them, so I opted to try and patch it up so the day was not real eventful for me and did not achieve a lot at all. As the leak was not that bad I went below after I had made the bombs and blew the roof down, after I had pulled the fumes I went back down and started to pull the dry dirt along with some more of the wet dirt and mud still down there, spent a couple of hours or so doing this until I had used all of the dry stuff and finished the job. This is just to remind you of how it look after I had got all of the water out and the mud off the floor ready for drill the first shot, this is the old shot to the right.

And this is what it looks like now, after all of the wet ground has gone, this is now ready for a shot, well almost as I just have to make the face straight up and down, there is a slight angle on it now as the shot did not come out properly due to not drilling any relieve holes to help it, I must admit this ground did not give me as much trouble with blockages as I expected for which I am very happy.

This was the wet, very wet ground to the left I have removed about 1/2 of this right now, when I blow the roof above here I will remove the rest of it.

This is what it looks like now, was not easy getting rid of this lot but had to be done, will be glad when it is all gone and we are back to normal, but things are going well so far.

The shot above took me 2 days to remove along with the wet and damp ground and repairing or patching up the radiator as well, plus a few other small jobs that we have to do in the course of mining, putting diesel fuel into the blower etc. Just for the people who have never seen how we drill the shot holes underground, first I make the wall where I want the holes to go and then I will drill them to the depth of the auger which in this case is 3 foot 6 inches except of the opener, that is the first bomb that goes off, it has to blow out and make a hole for the rest to blow into, here the opener has the stick in it and is only 3 feet deep.

Here I am drill the top right hand corner hole, you can see the squibby level just above.

These are the worst holes to drill for me as they take the most effort to drill and the ground is the wettest here down the bottom and so takes more effort to clean the dirt out of the hole, in normal ground as in drilling the roof I just drill the hole with out stopping until the auger is in full depth, but with wet or damp ground I must only drill about 3 or 4 inches and then I have to clean out the hole by running the auger back and forth until all of the dirt is out and drill another 3 or 4 inches, takes a lot of energy and wears your shoulders out I can tell you.

Here I am drill the roof holes which I will load and shoot with the next shot, normally I drill and fire a shot and at the same time I drop the roof from the shot before, I light the bombs so the roof ones blow after the shot ones have gone off.

This is the shot ready for loading the bombs into, you can see the extra holes I have drilled as relieve holes, this means that the holes have made the ground in-between the shot holes weak and instead of the explosive having to take out or try to take out a large lump of ground it can now break into these holes and makes the explosive not work as hard and ensure that the shot will come out as I want, otherwise I would have to drill more shot holes and use more bombs and probably not drill as deep, only to 3 foot, this is only in wet ground and dry, dry ground is very easy to work in plus quicker and cheaper.

This shot came out good and I will start to pull the dirt tomorrow after I go and fill the truck with fuel and get some for the generator, but the lever was clean except for a very small bit of trace, the potch that I was showing you in the wall has gone. Now it is back to prospecting again, that is looking for pockets, right now I will continue the drive towards the slide which is about 20 feet away, I will measure the distance this week, when I have cut this slide I will then make up my mind where to go next as this may give me some information which I need to see if the opal is forming on a line and how far out from the slide is it throwing or is the slide throwing it at all, there is a lot in this game to learn and a lot of the time it is mostly luck no matter what you think you know, so for now I will just play it by ear. But who knows what is in front of us in this game, nobody so I may have some exciting news for you next week with some photos and then I might not so until next week Bye. Keep Tuned as I will have another shot or 2 to talk about next week and who knows what we will have found.................. Again I 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. 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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