December 31, 2005 Opal Mining Update - No 56 Found some opal, but Broke Down again.

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So here we are at the end of another year, how it has gone past do quickly, I do feel that the older you get the faster time goes by, it has so far not been a good year for me with the opal, but I cannot complain too much as I have also been learning the machine and doing a few modifications to it as I have gone along, just like now I am doing the repairs, not from a breakdown but as I was still able to work, but I inherited the oil leaks from when I first bought the machine, but they did not become apparent until I had the machine underground and using it under load. The leaks got worse over the last year, so I had no choice but to pull the machine out and fix them, plus a few other small items, today is the first of the month and we are having a Thunder Storm right now, it is raining heavy outside so I am at home today, I was down at Ross's but it is to dark inside the workshop with the door closed and no sun for me to see what I am doing properly so another day is lost, but who is in a hurry, we just have to go with the flow and do what we can when possible. Such is the life of an Opal Miner, best not to rush into anything, your life may depend on taking it easy if you know what I mean, below is the inside cutting plate that I am modifying, this is the plate that I had made in Queensland and at first put 8 teeth on it which turned out to be to many and did not work properly which is what caused the stress cracks, which I have ground out and welded up as you can see, now I have to grind the welds flat and then I can weld the teeth holders that I have made onto it, so no more cutting and grinding off old teeth in the future, will just be able to knock them out from behind to replace them with new ones.

I still have to modify the new teeth for this plate as they cannot be used the way they are, I have to cut the rounded shoulder off them and cut them 1/2 inch shorter, as this plate sticks out further that the outside cutter and leaves a recess in the wall, you may have noticed in some of the other photos of the face when I am tunneling, as of today I still have not received the O-Rings for the controls, but hoping that they will be here tomorrow, not a big job replacing them, then I can get back to replacing the units on the machine, just a couple of small things to do after that and I will be ready to go back on the field with it. Here I am drilling the holes in the plate so I will be able to knock out the teeth from behind when they are due to be changed, this plate is a lot heavier than the old one, but is a lot stronger.

This is one of my Gun Holsters as I call them, there is one on the other side as well, as I now work with this electric jackpick up front while I am working, I was having trouble keeping it in place and out of the way, now it has its own place and is well out of the way while the machine is working at the face, it was to much trouble to keep taking it to the rear of the machine with me every time I used it, as most times it is only used for a few seconds before I would put it down again, now this will save me a lot of time and will also be lot easier and quicker to pick up and put down again.

Here are the control units ready for me to take apart and replace the O-Rings in them, I have already started on one of them, this unit at front was not leaking but have to replace all because as far as I know they are all of the same age, if I miss the one/s that are not leaking now it may not be long before they are. and I don't want to do this job again in the near future.

This unit has to have a replacement part, the spool as it is called had some rust on it and although I have cleaned it up with fine sandpaper it is pitted, so that means if I use it again it will still leak oil, so I have ordered a new part for it, the person who built this machine had used an old dust cover off a bigger unit and it did not fit right on this unit and it had let dirt in which in turn had got wet/damp through standing around in the open weather for years and the bottom of this spool was touching the wet/damp dirt which started the unit rusting. I had already bought a new dust cover for this unit and had not expected this problem, all for the sake of a $8.00 piece of rubber it has cost me $87.00 for the new replacement spool, anyway this will not happen again and if they had covered it when it was standing outside in the weather and not in use underground it would not have happened in the first place.

All of the control units are fixed and back on the machine ready for action, so lets hope I have done the job properly and will have no more leaks from them, below I have also extended the side plate that I put on to stop the dirt from getting under the front of the tracks as it is tunneling forward, making the front of machine to start to climb upwards, this modification has been doing a good job, but the 3 inch width only just covered the front of the track at the bottom where there is a gap between the front plate and the ground as it goes around, so while it was here I thought I would extend it by another 3 inches, just to make sure it covers all.

This is the inside cutter now I have cut the old teeth off and put teeth holders on it, now no more cutting and grinding old teeth off or welding new ones on which is a pain to do, now I can just knock them out and in underground, simple, also as the teeth wear down I can take them out and put 1/2 inch spacers in there to make the teeth stick out more, because I put angle 3 inch iron on the outside of the cutting head to stop the dirt getting thrown everywhere, this angle iron starts to rub on the face when the teeth get worn down by about half, so now I can rectify that and get full use out of the teeth, as they come with a 5/8 tungsten tip, this plate is also stronger than the old one that came with the machine, see below.

This is the old plate that came with the machine, I have changed the teeth on it, but was still not cutting right like this and I thought at the time that I had done a good job, but this is a job of tweaking and take time to try and get things right, so it is a matter of trial and error, as there are many types of round tunnel machines here. Most of them are like my friend Bruno's, they have one cutting head and all of the cutter are on that head, 3 of them, this machine has 2 cutting heads one on either side of the machine making up one cutting head and as mine has floor cutters it is the only machine of its kind here, so I have to experiment for myself as what is best for the machine for it to work properly, the main thing wrong with this plate is that is has had metal cut out of it. This cutting out of the metal has made arms in the plate and although it has made the plate lighter, it has made it weaker and when I took this off the machine to cut the old teeth off it, by the way I had already cut 3 teeth of it so it was only cutting with 3 teeth which was perfect, but the it was bent by 1/8 of an inch across the arms, so that means that it could only get worse and would be of no use to me in the future. The teeth have to stick out a certain distance from the plate, in this case 3 inches, the outside plate is different and is 3 1/2 inches the teeth stick out, so if the plate bends in this case I am loosing 1/8 of an inch in depth and it would be more in the future, so I went to the new plate I had made, this is stronger as it is one piece and will not bend like this one below, also will cut better as it will have a flywheel affect when cutting.

Well we are back at work finally, one day short of 4 weeks since I took the machine out to when I went back to work here, I put he machine back down last Wednesday, but it rained the next day so I had to stay at home for the next 2 days to let it dry out, then I had to do some work on the web site, so at last I am back into it, I am about to start a new drive, just slightly to the left of the drive I had connected to the shaft with and was opening up around before I pulled the machine back to pull it out for repairs.

There is a chance that I will find some opal in this corner (or so I told my wife, Patricia) as there was trace (potch) in the level from before when I was mining by hand, I had even drilled a couple of 4 1/2 holes under the level so I could jackpick it out for a look but decided to leave it until I could get here with the machine, as you can see I have started the drive and have done about 4 feet so far and you can still see the drive (next door) where I went up to the next level, which turned out to be a waste of time and effort.

Here you can see where I drilled in under the level when I was hand mining, but decided to leave it until I got here with the tunnel machine, there was traces of potch in the level and I have already struck a bit of color, which is below, I did get some opal out of this area last year when I was hand mining, so I am hoping that there is some more in here for me.

Here you can se green opal in the face, only small at this stage and this is why we call it trace and hope that it will turn into or lead to a pocket of good sized opal, and I do not mind green opal or Green/Blue as it is in demand right now for inlay jewelry, but I will be glad of any color as it has been a very dry spell this year for me and my wife, so anything with color is good opal for me at the moment.

Well that green did not make anything all, what you saw is what I got, but about 3 inches behind that green trace was a small pocket of Red Gray, not a lot but a welcome sight I can tell you, dug it out right where the arrow is and as you can see I am only just over 2 feet into this new drive, so now you can see how easy it is for us to miss opal, I am only 18 inches in from the drive next door and all I found in the drive if you remember is that shell and the pocket of potch, just hope there is more in front of me.

This is 5 pieces as I dug them out of the face, not a good photo as it was overcast outside when I finished work for the day, but nice color's and with lots of red, hope there is still some more to come.

Here I have run into a vertical, right now it is potch and there is another piece of potch on the right, these in actual fact turned into opal just after I had taken this photo, so I pulled out a nice little pocket of the same kind of opal as yesterday and above.

The vertical above went into seam (flat on the level) and then turned into a vertical again, but this time it is on a slant and standing straight up like above and it had 3 bars running through it, instead of being skin to skin like most of the opal I have been finding so far, was 2 very nice sized pieces, but only classed as Potch &Color, you can see that the ironstone level is very thick here and is also very hard, even though I am in very damp ground, will keep tunneling on and see what comes next, if anything.

Here I have struck a small piece of opal, with little bits of material (potch) also in the level with it, got a bit more opal from here when I dug in, same opal again as before, this is a massive iron stone level in thickness, love it easy to follow.

This is the opal that I have found in the last 11 feet of the drive, it is Red Gray and Crystal together, its as if Mother nature could not make here mind up so made it 50/50 and when I say that I mean that some (most) of opal pieces were half and half, as of writing this I am 6 feet past where the opal was found and it is all gone, was just in a narrow line, unusual for me to find small pockets of opal over that distance and have it all of the same kind and color, now just have to hope that I can run into some more, sooner rather than later.

Now you have drooled over the opal photos above, this is where I am right now in the drive only about 2 feet more in from here as I write this, you can also see how close I am to the drive next door and the drive that went up to the next level, I am going away from the old drive on a slight angle and will tunnel out so I am about level with the shaft next door, (83 feet) no point in going past it as I will be driving across to the left and right in front of these drives when I am finished in this area, by the time I am finished doing drives in this corner I may even take one or more of the pillars out if I think there may be opal in them.

Here I have come across some small amount of green trace, again you can see that it is not far in from the other drive where there was indication of any material or color, I have found opal right on the side of a shaft that the drill just touched, but it could not be seen with the naked eye or blacklight, but when you run the pick down the face you can hear it scrape on the opal, which is like scraping glass, so you can miss it by 1/16 of an inch and not know it is there, the old story here is if you don't see it you don't get it or the other one is, if your name is not on it, its not yours.

This is a reasonable close up of the trace, sad to say this was it, picked it out and all was gone, no more behind it, right now I am on trace almost every inch on the way, this day I did not go far as I had a lot of problems with blockages, most of the trouble was caused by me making mistake's, not once but 3 times, guess you could put it down to the excitement of keep picking colored trace out of the wall, anyway was not a good morning work wise.

Here is some more greenish potch with a trace of green and this is above the level in among the gypsum, bit harder to dig out, but again only trace and no opal or money here, I am now past a fault and into new ground this is why I am getting traces of green and not red, but like the drive next door I do not expect to find anything here and the distance between the 2 faults in about 19 feet and from the 2 other drives to the right I have done in this direction, the ground has not settled down and so that is why I do not expect it to produce any opal, but opal being what it is and its where you find it, I cannot say for certain that I will not find anything within the next 20 feet.

I finished work on the 22nd as they had forecast 45C for that day, which is in the shade so on the field the equipment would have been in about 60C, so I did not go in the day as I thought it would be to hot around 11am, so stayed at home and cleaned the opal more and got it ready for classing and sale and I sold it on Saturday, so when I went back to work on Monday the 26th I found that I had a flat tire on the front of the blower. What caused it to go down, I have no idea, I did some work with the tunnel machine after I had moved some of the dump with the loader and put some diesel up in the blower fuel tank, the last 3 photos above are of that morning work, or I should say 2 and a half hours work, when I came up and went to shut down the generator I noticed that I had a water leak coming from the water pump area on the generator.

Today I went out to take the wheel off the blower and bring it in to get it fixed, thankfully I can use the winch to lift the wheel so I can tip it into the truck, without this I would need to have a helping hand as I cannot lift this weight by myself, I also put 5 liters of water in the generator and it was leaking out from the water pump seal as quick as I was putting it in, I am very lucky in as much that it the pump seal must have gone not long before I finished for the morning, if it had happened just after I had started the shift the generator would have lost all of the water and seized as the watch dog would not have worked with this problem.

For those of you that remember the newsletter from February 2003, when I was broke down in Mt Isa with my 4x4 while going on holidays, what happed to that motor would have happened to this one as exactly the same thing happened, the water pump seal went and the motor seized, which ended up costing us a lot of money and 3 weeks stuck in Mt Isa and I recon a rebuild on this engine would have cost us around the $6000 to $7000 mark, plus the cost and time of getting it out and sending it away to Adelaide etc, so I count myself lucky that the pump went at the right time, you could call it bad luck and good luck all at the same time. This is my very good friend and Mechanic, Dave Matters who helped me bring the blower in, Dave wanted to have a look at my claim and see what I was up to and at the same time he would help me to bring in the blower so he could take off the water pump, which is in his hand here, he enjoyed what he saw under ground and stated that he would like to have my claim or one like it, Dave himself also has a Tunnel Machine but a square one and is rebuilding his in-between helping people like me get out of the shit when we get in it, which is quite often just lately.

You would not believe that when bringing the blower in I had got about half way in when the Temp Gauge shot up to over heating, so I pulled the truck up and Dave asked what is wrong, when I told him he said then that the Thermostat had gone, I did not think so as I had done a few miles by then and the Thermostat would have been wide open or I would not have got that far, I had brought 30 liters of water with me as I always do when moving the blower as you never know which old vehicles, not the first time I have had to put water in the radiator on the way in, anyway we filled the Rad about 4 times but each time did not get more that a few hundred meters before I had to pull up and stop and the water was pouring out of the overflow as the engine was boiling. So Dave pulled out the Thermostat which was another funny unit and not like a normal car one, this was suspended between 3 hoses and when the Thermostat opened it shut the bypass hose off, anyway when he got it out, it turns out that the spring setup that controls the shutting of the Thermostat when cold had rusted out and the spring unit had shot out jamming inside and the Thermostat Valve had closed, resulting in it over heating, how would my luck be, another breakdown on the way in to fix a breakdown. So we left the blower where it was (only 5 kilometers out) and came in to get some more water and to find a one and a half inch hose to make a by-pass and a plug to block off the small by-pass hose to the water pump, now it will run without a Thermostat as one is not really needed for what this truck does here. It had not been very good year for my Wife and I with the mining, the opal has been hard to come by and I have had my share of problems with repairs and breakdowns and also with the tweaking of the machine to get it to operate and cut better. I have still to fix that very bad oil leak and then build a pair of small running boards for down each side of the machine so I can stand on them when digging at the face, it has been hard on my ankles when standing along side of the machine and I think this running board idea may solve it, wont know until I try it, that itself is not big job and will only take one morning to make them. I have decided to buy a new water pump for the generator as I have found a place that has one, but as it is still holiday time here, I cannot order one until next Tuesday at the earliest, so I may have it by Thursday or Friday and once I have fixed the generator I really have no excuse not to get on with mining and find some more opal this next year, except when I am on holidays of course, which is of right now 4 weeks to go. For those of you that are regular readers you will know we go away for 9 weeks for fishing and some rest, my wife Pat needs it more than I as she works very hard as a House Maid for a Motel here, so she needs to recoup her strength, mental and physical for the next year's work, me I just do what I want and come home when I want, so I am a some what lucky that I can work the hours I want, but Pat can't. I would like to wish all of my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope that you have enjoyed what I have show you over the last 12 months, I do believe that I will show you more photos of opal in the coming year and not so many problems or breakdowns. 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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