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March 30, 2005
Opal Mining Update - No 48 Back home and Mining again |
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Well we are back home again, like all holidays its always good to be back home or so I thought, I had just backed the boat in and got it parked right on the 4th attempt, then I unhooked the boat trailer and backed the 4x4 in so it would be easier to unload it, so we had not been home for half an hour when this dust storm hit.
It had been windy all the way from Alice Springs, thankfully it was a tail wind and we never saw any dust, so it must have been following us, after this had been blowing for about a couple of hours a bit of rain came behind it as usual, enough to make a mess of the vehicles window screens etc, funny as they have had no rain since we have been away, so like I said, nice to be home, now to get back to normal, what ever that is!  |
Here is the plate that I had made in Queensland, had it made there as while I was on holidays there was no rush to have it finished, here I would have had to wait at least a week to get it done if I was lucky, anyway now to cut the teeth to shape and then to weld them on, this will be finished today and on the machine tomorrow.
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This is the outside cutter, I had broken the tip of a tooth off one of them so here I have cut the old tooth out, at bottom of photo, now to cut the an old tooth (new really, didn't stay on long) that got knocked off this cutter in when I first made it into shape then to weld it on, I left the gusset on, so that will save me a bit off time.
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Here is the new plate, all finished and ready to put down the shaft and on the machine, then we will see if it does a better job that the old one, it cannot be any worse that's for sure, bit heaver but will have a flywheel affect, which will help it cut through the hard stuff.
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This is the drive as I left it just before going on holidays, for the new subscribers that did not read that issue, the white stuff is called Alinite, its like a highly compressed talc powder, sometimes it is hard and sometimes it is soft, this is on the hard side, this and the concrete is the stuff that wears the teeth down and also wears the fan teeth down as well and makes holes in the fan housing and the elbows as it is highly abrasive.
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This is the drive now after doing a few feet, you can see the white alinite has almost gone and that some sort of ironstone level is coming in, the ironstone level on the right which look like a fork is starting to carry material, (potch) and the very first piece I checked had some green orange color to it, but after that nothing and the material comes and goes and is only in small pieces.
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A close up of the material, not to much to see at the moment but who knows what is in front of the machine.
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The ground has changed again and is all messed up at the moment, I have brought the machine back a few feet and then started to take it down as I went forward until I was down about 9 inches as I feel that what is going to be the level is too low and I need to bring it up a bit higher, this is done by taking the machine down and then leveling it off.
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Now we have a fault come in front of us, it is going across the face at an angle and is also carrying traces of potch here and there, no color so far, when I am using the wires up top trying to find these faults (Divining, believe it or not) if I am standing in front of it, that is as you can see the fault leaning on a angle, to the right is the front of it and to the left is the back of it, when in front the wires start to open up for me so I know that I am in front of one of them and as I walk towards it, they open up more and more until I am standing right on top of it.
Then I have to find where it starts and finishes, that is the angle of it, what depth it goes to and if/where it cross's or meets another one, if it does and they face each other, this is where we get corners and may find a good pocket of opal, this is not guaranteed way of finding opal, but is a very good indicator as faults do lead to opal pockets, but not all faults make opal, so it is still the LUCK part that is the most important part of our game.  |
This fault has now started to carry potch, all of that white in it is potch, but it did not last long and never turned to color, but looks impressive, the ground is still damp but causing no problems as yet.
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Now the fault has gone straight across the face and will soon disappear in the side wall, the ground still has not settled down at this time, but expect a ironstone level to come in at some point in front of me as the fault goes further away for me and if I am reading the ground right it should start to carry material at some point, maybe even some opal.
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Just as predicted, a level has come in, a good strong one but the ground above it is still mixed up somewhat with no Alinite or Gypsum, on the right hand side it did produce a couple of skin shells but potch, but as I reached 74 foot out from the shaft it got to wet for the machine and was causing me troubles, so I had to quit the drive for now, will go back in at a later date and finish it as I am still some 18 feet short of the shaft I was going for, but this will be some months away now before I will be back.
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By the way the new cutting head is working beautifully, it really makes the cutting of any hard ground a lot easier, but as I am still in wet ground, cannot tell at this time if it makes any difference to the cutting time or footage per hour, this I will see when I get into some dry ground, which will not be long.
This is the result from the wet ground and I also have the one up top to worry about as well, even though the bottom one blocks about 4 to 1 against the top one and then there is also the hopper that will get blocked where the pipe leads into it and the mud builds up slowly until it cuts off the vacuum, if there is not a good sized dump up I cannot reach the hopper to try and knock the blockage off and then I have to wait until it dries, this is alright during the summer, but in the winter I have seen it take a week for the mud to dry and fall off.  |
This is the plastic flexible hose that I bought just for the wet ground, with this hose I stop having blockages on the elbow like above, now when this is in place all I have to do about every hour is to give a hit with a piece of wood to knock of the build up and it works real good now I have tried it, but this pipe is only good for wet ground, dry ground will wear it out pretty quick, for that it back to the metal one.
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After the drive above I pulled the machine back to the pipes again and was going to do a drive on the up again, but though that while I was back here I would go down an old drive that was not to deep, which is the drive below with the light hanging in front of it, this drive is right next door to the one that I was on potch for most of the 52 feet in the drive next door on the right, but again the wet ground at this stage beat me again, have to get a special elbow made for up top so I can hit that with a hammer to get rid of the build up to make life easier for me.
In this drive again I hit material/potch but on the left hand side of the drive when I though I would have it on the right hand side, the side where it is in the drive next door but it did not work out that way, the material was on the other side of the drive, no telling where Mother Nature puts it, if at all, there was a trace of green here and there, so will have to finish that drive also another day. Here we have got the machine back to the shaft again and getting ready for another drive, this drive will be going up to the next level this time.  |
As you can see I am right under the shaft and the down pipes are right next to the machine, so much so I had to move the machine back a few feet when I wanted to go up and start the blower, as the seat was right on top of it.
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Here you can see what was hidden behind the machine in the photos above, all of the cables that I have had to hang out of the way while I get the machine going forward and out of the way, here I now got the machine lined up in the direction I want to go, I will now drive up until I get to the level above and when I reach that point I will level the machine off, do about another 15 feet and then get a shaft drilled to connect to the drive, this will be better for me in the future as then I will be in reach of 4 other shafts to work the blower from and do some prospecting for where the opal is. |
The center of the drive will be just to the right of the arrow below, where the arrow is I was chasing in a small vertical, it came in and then disappeared then came back in again and disappeared again, the last time a got about 1/2 an ounce form it and skin to skin red gray, so it may come back in again, as for the dirt in front of the machine it is left from the last time I did a shot and I left this vertical for when I got the machine, so now as I go forward and up I will be able to check here to see if it leads to anything, we can but hope that Mother nature will smile on me and give me a gift.
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As I was moving the machine from this last drive something made the power cut out (twice) which throws the safety switch out up top on the generator, both times I took the plug apart and sprayed CRC in there thinking it was condensation causing a short, then I have to go up and put the switch to on and come back down, then it was alright for the rest of the shift as this happened within the first 1/2 hour of working.
But the next day when I started the machine and was putting it in position above, I noticed that the plug connection was smoking, don't know how long it had been doing this, but had only had the machine switched on for around 1 hour there abouts, anyway switched the motors off and came home, went and seen a friend of mine Boro, who knows all about this electrical stuff on these machines and explained it all to him, he said that he would come down the next day and have a look at it for me. Here is Boro coming down, he has been mining here for over 30 years so knows a thing or two about it, things that I will have to learn if I stay in this game long enough, as I always say you never know when your number is up, so I do what I can do while I can still do it and always willing to listen and learn, the only way to find opal.  |
Well it looks like I am out of business for a while, the plug is burnt out, well part of it anyway, Boro tells me that the Electrician that I got to do the job did not do it properly, not the whole job as I was pleased with that, but as for putting the wires in the back of the plugs and sockets, he did it wrong resulting in this, he had not doubled over the wires when he put then in the back of the prongs, male and female so the screws did not clamp on the wires properly causing them or at least the main red wire to over heat and burn things out, here this base is burned out and finished and the prong is also burned out and no good anymore.
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This is the worst burnt part, not that it matters burnt is burnt, but it did a real good job here, the heat must have been enormous to do this damage, it's a wonder I did not smell it when it was happening but I didn't until we took it apart then you could smell it real bad.
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As you can see it burnt right through, from front to back there are 2 parts to this one you see Boro holding above and this one makes up the plug inside as they hold the brass prongs in place and also one male prong from the socket is burnt as well, now I have to try and find out if I can get spare parts for it, will have to make a phone call to Melbourne, where I bought them from to find out, so to keep my fingers crossed as a new plug could cost as much as $700.00 to $800.00 I believe.
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The mining truck has also broke down, since I had been back from holidays it had developed a very bad vibration, so I asked a friend of mine Dave who is a mechanic to came and take it for a drive to see if he could find what the problem was.
After he had taken it for a test drive he said the tail shaft universal joints was the problem, I said that I had check that and found no play in them, but forgot that I had put the hand brake on which stopped me feeling any play in it. so he took it off and sure enough the universal joints were shot, so he replaced them and put the tail-shaft back on took it for a test drive and found that the bad vibration was still there. Dave came back another day and jacked up the truck and did some tests by hand and found the problem within 5 minutes had found the problem, it was some bolts that had worked there way loose at the rear of the gearbox, so he had to remove the tail-shaft again and retighten the bolts and reset the lock tab that had worked its way loose, so the bolts would stay tighten up, after all the truck is a 1972 model, so it is getting old. I took it for a test drive again and all is back to normal, as normal as it can be for its age (like me I suppose) except for a leak I have in the gas tank again, if you all remember I had fixed a leak in this tank (below) in June last year and it looks like its coming from the same area again, so will have to take the tank off again to fix it, but first I want to go out to the field again to run the fuel a bit lower to make it easier to empty the tank into a drum before I take it off.  |
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It looks like I am able to get parts for the electric plug after all and I have the white porcelain parts ordered and the brass prongs, so at this time I am waiting for them to arrive in Adelaide so I can get them sent up here, Boro the friend of mine above who came down and took the plugs apart knew of a electrical shop in Adelaide that he deals with, so he rang them for me to find out if they could get the parts for me, nice to have friends that can help you, just like the mechanic Dave Matters, hi Dave, thought you were a mention for helping me get back on track, this job is hard enough and having friends like this just make it that bit easier to do.
I hope to be back in action sometime next week, depends when I get the parts and then Boro has to go and fix the wiring for me, he says that he wants to re-wire the socket with new heavier wires, so he will have to run the cable from the switchboard to this socket, so this does not happen again, so it will be up to him when he can go and do it for me. Then after the machine is fixed I have to pull that dirt in front of the machine by hand, might even go and do it before if the parts will take to long to get here, then I can get on with repairing the fuel tank and so things will return back to normal whatever normal is here. 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! |
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