May 31, 2005 Opal Mining Update - No 49 Breakdowns Fixed and back to work.

Site Map Home Page Archived Pages Contact Guest Book

All breakdowns have now been fixed and I am now back mining, I had a few problems hit me all at once here, it seems to go like that here, you don't have any problems or breakdowns for sometime then you have nothing but trouble. Below is the other burnt out part, this is the socket part that the plug fits into, we did not realize that this was gone also until I reached over to have a look at it and when I got hold of it, that front part just broke in two, it took 2 weeks to get this part and then I had to wait for Boro to fit me into his busy schedule to come and fix it for me. I am also happy that parts were available for the plugs and I did not have to buy new ones, so I got out of it for around $260.00 and a month off work, will not happen again when it is fixed this time.

I have to modify the cover that is around the cutting head on the machine, as there is 2 heads here, one being removable if you remember from when I first put the machine down the big shaft which is on the left of photo, so there is a big gap as you can see which lets a lot of dirt get thrown out and down the side of the machine tracks as it is working, so I have to fill this gap to stop it, I am also removing that small 12 volt light at the front here as it does not do much at all and when the gap is filled in it will not do anything at all as it is just below the lip in front of it.

Here I have cut another piece of conveyer belt that just happened to be the exact length that I needed but had to cut a little off the top, I went down to Ross's shop and cut a piece of flat 3 inch wide flat bar and drill 6 holes 3/4 of an inch in and 1 inch from the top and bottom and one in the middle, then I bolted the flat bar on and took it underground, where I had only to clamp it in place so I could drill the holes and then bolt it together, I then put a black rubber silicone on the back along the top 1 inch of the yellow part and put clamps on it till it dries which will be tomorrow.

Then I had to fill in the bottom part, which I did by cutting another piece of thinner conveyer belt to length and then cutting it to shape, easier than I thought it would be then I used the black rubber silicone again on the back to hold it in place and filled in around it so it is a complete sealed unit, this will be easy to take off and clean when I have to take the machine out of the claim with the crane and will be able to reuse it as many times as I want, now I have to do the other side as soon as I have some power to the machine so I can turn the head over, then when that is done I have to do another modification with angle iron to finish it off, then I hope it has fixed my problem of throwing dirt down the side of the machine and getting in front of the tracks which is helping the machine to go up slowly.

At long last here is the new part for the socket, now I have to wait until Boro my friend can come and put it in for me, as he also wants to put in a new thicker cable from this plug to the control switch box and I don't want to mess with that box, I watched the first electrician do all the wiring in there and its over my head for sure that lot.

Here is my friend Boro, putting the new cable and socket part together, he is or was an electrician by trade, but now like me he is an opal miner, he does all the fixing and his partner does the mining with a square machine.

Just finishing off and making sure that all is well, but the plug does not go into the socket all of the way, it is 1/8 on an inch short, so I have told him not to worry about it as I will check it out tomorrow and find the problem and fix it. (I hope)

I have found the problem, took me a while to find it, I took the socket cover off again and checked to see if the male part inside was the same as the one we had replaced, never know as the old one was old and they may have modified the new part have it a bit longer, but no this was alright, so I took the plug apart and also check the new parts for being the same length as the old one which is was, so I put the plug together again and put it in the socket as this did not have the cover on yet so I was able to see that the plug did not butt right up against the opposite part, so I remover the plug and had a look down the female pins and saw that one of them had not been drilled right through, so here was the problem all I had to do was to take the pin off, bring it home and run a 3/8th drill down far enough for the pin not to bottom out on it and the problem was solved.

Here is the plug and socket put back together again and the plug is now locket into the socket by that ring, this stops the socket being pulled or vibrating out, because if it came loose through this ring not being locked it cause the pins to burn again and we don't want that problem ever again if we can help it, so now its back to mining at long last.

When Boro put the new cable on, the grommet on the control box was to small for this size cable, not thinking about this we did not bring a new one, the one in the photo above for the socket end was large enough, for some reason the other electrician put a bigger one on the socket plate but left this one as it is the old one that was already here and fitted the cable he used (the wrong sized cable which caused the problem), so one was right and one was wrong, this one, so he had to strip the cable back a bit more than he wanted so he could pull the cables through and fit them inside the box, now I have to seal these cables so no moisture can get inside the box.

So all I have done is to coat it with my black rubber silicone, which makes it flexible not that it moves where it is and also water proof, cheap but does the job nicely, now to do some work.

As I am going to do this next drive going up to the level above, I have some dirt in front of me that needs to be got rid off, this is from the old drill and blast dump, will be a bit easier if I get rid of this by hand, then bring the machine up and start cutting as some of the bigger rocks here get stuck and jammed in the crusher box at the front of the machine, it is not designed for big hard pieces on alanite or gypsum only small stuff that the machine cuts, it can handle some pieces of sandstone and the front floor cutters will break this up with no problems, so for now it is back to the old ways and I can tell you that after I had finished this lot I do not miss the old way at all, but we still have to do this now and again as it is part of the job even when you have a machine.

Now I have removed enough dirt to get the machine close to the face and start the new drive, but first I have to do a small job to the cutting head in covering up a gap on the other side from the repair you can see here.

Here is the gap I have to fill to stop dirt falling through as it goes around, I have a lot more to do to this head to stop dirt getting throw out and past it.

I have glued and bolted on a patch below, so that when the extendable head, which is the one to the right, is removed in the future all of this will be part of it and none will have to be removed, now I have to cut and bolt some angle iron on the top of the rubber to try and stop some of the dirt getting thrown out as it goes around.

Now we are starting the new drive, this is my 4th attempt at going up, hopefully I will get it right this time, as this drive must go up to the next level, no excuses this time, but it is not easy when learning, driving on the level is easy but go up, down or turning it takes a bit of learning before I get the experience to do it without thinking.

Here we are 6 foot in, you can see the level in the face and how it is falling to the left, this is the way that some opal may be as there is still some potch in the wall on the left and I did find 1/2 ounce of green orange opal on the corner of the drive just on the left of this drive, so I will be doing a drive here to the left in the future, but for now I must make this drive up to the next level and work up there for a while to see if that level is carrying any opal before coming back down to finish off this in this area.

Here some skin shells have started to come in just under the level, these have no color and are just potch but I did find one that did have a bit of color in it.

Here it is, it is 3/4 of a mussel shell, (specimen shell) these mussel shells have not changed there shape for around 125 million year as this fossil skin shell that has some color in it, is all of that age or there abouts, the experts recon that the opal we find here is between 85 and 125 million years old, so they have been around for a long time

Here I am, hard to take a self portrait, but put the camera on a piece wood on top of a up-turned pipe with the timer set to 10 seconds, works out good, as you can see I am not that far into the drive here, only 6 foot so far but going well, problem is that I have to stand all the time now I am going up at a 20%  angle, I will be able to rest one knee on the seat from time to time, as my ankles will be killing me by the time I go home.

Not long after I had found that mussel shell above I got this bit of shell come in the face and when I dug it out, there is as you can see a bar of color running through it, opal at last, nice to see some good color, almost forgot what it looks like.

Here you can see the shell side on and the bottom of the shell is at the top, the color is I believe is a "Harlequin" pattern, wont know for sure unless the top or bottom of the shell is taken off so we can see.

Now the shell is right side up and there is lots of RED showing in this shell pattern, if it is "Harlequin" then it has the rarest of patterns found in opal along with the RED which is also the rarest of colors in opal, so we may have a gem of a stone here.

After looking at the shell properly I decided that I had to make a RUB out of it, that is to just take the top or bottom of it but not to polish it, so we can see the color and then I could get a price put on it, here I decided that the bottom was the best way to go and sure enough I was right, it is "Harlequin" but what we call Checker Board Harlequin the second rarest pattern in opal.

The surface of the shell is just made wet so I can take the photo of it, this is the same as above only from a different angle so you can see how the red moves around, but no photo can show you the full fire in this stone, this really is a lucky find, to find opal is hard enough but to find a true gem stone is extremely rare, they call opal a gem stone, but not all opal we find makes a true gem stone, this is one of them.

Now we are making some headway in the drive and you can see that the ground in front of me has changed now that I am starting to go up above the level and if you look closely at the side walls you can see that the level is still falling to the left, the brown lines in the side walls is the level also you can from the level in the front face, still some skin shells around on the right but not many and not a trace of color at all.

Here the ground has really changed and the level is now down near the bottom of the machine, we have alanite and some concrete now in the face, all trace of skin shells has now disappeared and the going is now a bit slower as the ground is starting to get hard to cut due to the concrete coming in.

I have to do a modification to the cutting head to try and stop some of the dirt getting throw back along side of the tracks when working, so I am going to bolt some angle iron on the rubber that surrounds it and see how we go, I have to cut and drill another couple after I have put these two on.

I am having trouble getting the angle right that I am going up at, below the machine is at too steep an angle, I started out alright but then after a few feet I start to go up steeper and I cannot tell at what angle I am at, the machine does not like this angle at all and to make it worse I have hit hard ground as well, the concrete that came in has spread and now covers a lot more area so now I am really struggling to make headway, so it important that I get the angle just right at 20% or less to make it easier on the machine and me.

I went to Ross's workshop to make some sort of level gauge for me and when I told Ross what I was going to do and what I wanted it for he showed me this gauge that he uses in making elbows etc with, so I asked him if I could use it for a few days as he does not use it that often and he said yes so this will make life a bit easier for me doing the drive, this gauge is spring loaded and has a magnetic base so it is easy to put on the machine, turns out that the machine was at 27% in the photo above, way too steep, the oil was getting to hot after a while, now I will able to work a bit longer and keep the oil cooler longer.

Here is the cutting head after I have bolted on the angle iron pieces on the top and bottom, this will stop some if not most of the dirt from being thrown out sideways as it goes around and should contain it so that it drops out at either end when that end faces down, still have a little bit to do to the edges later, but right now I just hope that this lot does some good.

Back view of one side, looks good nice and neat and it can stay in place permanently when I have to remove the extendable head which it is on to take the machine out of the ground.

Back view of the other side, I will have to put some pieces of rubber of the far left hand corner later as this is one of the problem areas but I cannot have metal there as when I correct the angle in the drive this corner mat get caught is the dirt so I have to have something that can bend or give in this area, apart from that I think it is finished.

Here the face is almost full of Alanite, on the right hand side that light brown area in between the white is the concrete, called that because it is as hard as and feels like concrete and is very hard to cut, so is the Alanite, both of these materials are very hard and abrasive and cause wear on the teeth, elbows and fans, this material has slowed me right down and the footage is starting to cost now in diesel, so I hope it all disappears soon so I can get back to normal what ever that is.

Now the face is completely full of alanite and I have just broken through the hard concrete, the alanite is still hard going but easier than it was, looks like I still have a lot of this to go through and may take some time, you can see the level gauge sitting on the electric motor on the right, I take it off when cutting because of the vibration and keep it in my back pocket, only put it on now and again to keep check on the angle.

It is surprising just how quick the angle changes without you even noticing, I have to keep bringing the machine every few feet and correcting the angle, all this takes up time, so this is another of the reasons that I am not going to fast in the footage area, but so long as I get this drive done correctly because I have to carry all the pipes etc up this drive when it is finished, there will be a shaft put in at the top of this drive when I have leveled the machine out and opened up the area for the machine to turn around in the I will move the blower over to this shaft and start driving the machine out in different angles from this shaft looking for opal. I have had to make an adjustment to the hydraulic control that controls the cutting heads as they were stopping when to much pressure or the cut was to much for them, this means that it was not set up properly in the first place, now they are working real good and they need to be for this hard ground, so I hope by the time you get the next update the drive will be finished and I will be rich, well no harm in dreaming. Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some good photos to show you in the next issue, of opal with color of course, I am hoping that this will be a good year for us, but only time will tell, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world. But normally it Patricia Until the next issue......... 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!

Top

Index Page | Site Map | Opals | Black Opals | Gold Pendants | Inlay Rings | About Our Opals | Earrings Opal Rough | Triplets | Doublets | Inlaid Opal Pieces | Wire Wrapped Opals | Valuing Opals | Opal Glossary