June 30, 2005 Opal Mining Update - No 50 Broke Down Again!

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Still on this drive going up right now, as I am still learning this part off mining with the tunnel machine I am a bit slow but will get better and quicker over time. The face was full of Alanite, now some sandstone is starting to come in at the top, there is still a bit of concrete in the face 3/4 way down on the left, and the floor is still giving me problems at the moment, but will get past it soon I hope.

I am starting to get up above the alanite slowly, this is the biggest amount of alanite I have ever come across, what is happing now it there is a hard spot in the center of the face on the left hand side and as the center cutter comes a round and try's to cut this, it tends to push the machine slightly sideways to the right, so the machine is slowly cutting round a bend, so I have to correct this every few inches before it gets to bad, this takes time and I am not getting very far quick, as soon as this hard spot is gone I will be back to just worrying about the upgrade angle, be glad when this drive is finished and I can get on with normal mining.

I am up about 6 feet now from when I started at floor level, as I said a 20% angle is up 2 feet for every 10 forward and I am about 38 feet out from the pipes so far, have at least another 30 to 40 feet to go yet, so its going to be a hard on the feet and back I should think, I am very glad I have that angle gauge to help me out, did not realize that the machine would change its angle so quick without me realizing it, so lets just hope there is plenty of opal up above for me to find to make all of this worth while.

Here you can see that the Alanite is disappearing and there is only a bit left in the left hand corner, just about rid of it and about time it was a worry there for a while, now we have some gypsum in the face but it is not a big problem at the moment and hopefully I can do a bit better with the footage per day now but will still be slow going while I am going up like this.

Now we are back to full sandstone and the cutting is a lot better, the gypsum is almost down to the center of the drive and when this happens it will cause me a problem until it gets it a bit lower, the center teeth find it hard to break through this as the head turns slowly and tends to make the machine ride up, will be back to normal when it drops below center and I have realigned the 20% angle, you can se the steps in the roof where I have brought the machine back and changed the angle because it starts to go up to high, I have to do this about every 1 to 1.5 feet I go forward.

As the machine is now past all of the hard alanite, I am still cutting powder, so I went and saw a friend about the teeth on the cutters and I have to many on there, I know that I have only just made a new one with 8 teeth on it and you may say, then why did you make the new one with 8 teeth on it. Answer is, that the machine came with the outside cutter with 8 teeth on it and as I have no experience with these machines I was not to know that the guy who built it who was an engineer had made a mistake, no wonder it had not done much work over the last 15 years since it was built, as it would not cut properly so they did not use it, nobody has bothered to get the bugs out of it and the guy who built it did not use it, but had it out on percentage along with a drill and blower, the drill and the blower was used as I knew this guys but not the tunnel machine, because I was told that they could not use it, now I know why.  Anyway as I was saying, the outside cutter came with 8 teeth on it and as the inside cutter is larger in diameter, I figured that it also needed 8 teeth and no sooner had I put the new cutter on I had started this drive going up and hit that hard ground, only the thing that I did not know was that the too many teeth was making it hard to cut and slowing me up and also making the machine work harder, the hydraulic oil was reaching temperatures of 220 degrees because of the drag, when it got to that after 3 hours I had to quit for the day. So I have a new plate that had not been used and came with the machine for the outside cutter so I cleaned it up and put 3 teeth on it, like the old inside one had and the old inside one that I put 6 teeth on I also cut 3 off so it also has 3 teeth on it and I took then down and swapped them over, now the machine is cutting a lot quicker and easier, bigger pieces, well as big as they are going to get and the hydraulic oil now does not go over 180 degrees, so it just shows that more teeth are not always the answer, that day I changed them over I did good footage and if it was not for going uphill and having to correct the angle all the time I would have been very happy with the days work, well still am under the circumstances.

Now I have taken the cutters with the 8 teeth on them down to Ross's and have cut all of the teeth on the outside cutter off completely, yet to be cleaned up with the grinder and the inside one I have cut 4 teeth off it and cleaned it up ready for taking back down with 4 teeth on, but when I got to work and was taking the cutter from the back of the truck I noticed what I thought was a crack in the plate, on closer inspection I found that the plate was full of them where the teeth had been welded on, must have been because it is dark inside Ross's workshop that I did not see them there and only when I it was in the sunlight I noticed them. Now I have to cut the other 4 off and clean the plate up with the grinder and get the cracks ground out and weld them up, found out that as the teeth are made from a special steel this cracking happens quite a lot when welded with ordinary welding rods, now I find out, so as I have to make some teeth holders for these plates so I do not have to cut, weld or grind anymore teeth off ever again and make it easy to change the teeth over when needed, so I have asked my friend Boro to weld them on for me as he has special welding rods for this purpose, pays to have good friends that can help you out when needed, that have experience in these matters, that's why I am still learning. Here is the drive when I pulled the machine back a few feet so I could change over the cutters, you can see that the gypsum is in the middle of the drive and that the little cutters in the middle are struggling to get through it, this is what is also making the machine go at a steeper angle, the small cutters tend to ride over the top of this gypsum as I push the machine forward, not much I can do about it until I get past it, but right now the gypsum is also going up with the drive, as there is a fault in front of me.

Here we are about 40 feet into the drive, don't know how much further I have to go right now, but I think I am about 9 foot up at this point, hard to tell for sure, except that I am going up 2 foot for every 10 foot of drive so that gives me some idea how high I am above the floor, the next level is around 13 foot up or there abouts.

While I am talking about levels, I have to try and find out where this next level is exactly before I do any more work with the machine and as I it was very windy today and I could not work because of it as the dust from the blower would have been blown right the 2 engines and into the air filters, so what I did was to go down and connect a hand light on the lead down there, grab a small pick off the machine and come back up the shaft, but before I went down I had put a tape measure down to 62 feet to give some idea where the level might be. What I have to do now and is a pain in the backside, but I have to go down 3 other shafts that are near me and that I will connect to in the future, do the same thing, put the tape measure down and go down and have a pick around to see if I can pick up the level, if I can then I will know the depth and how much further I have to go in the drive before I will hit it and level off the machine. I am not sure as I have never check it but the extra shaft that I got George to drill when I got the big shaft reamed out for the tunnel machine, I thought at the time that we hit an ironstone level around the 62 foot mark, so tomorrow I will have to go back down my shaft and get the small pick and come back up, I have a spare hand light and lead on the truck so I will go checking the other shafts and that will be my days work for me and I will be as dirty as hell and probably wet with sweat because they are all blind shafts and have no air flow. As for the levels, the ironstone level is not everywhere and come and goes with faults, the old claim next door did not have an ironstone level until I was nearly finished there and hit one that was a falling level, it was going under that gully that I am pushing dirt into now, man did that level carry material and it all had been opal, I could have had between 1/2 and 1 million shekels richer easily as I pulled out just over 4 thousand ounces of material out of it over a few months and less than 5% of it was color, that's what I need I need in this claim, a level like that. Here I have Ananite coming in again from the floor up and I now wear earmuffs to cut down on the noise, it is hard to describe the screeching and nose that comes from this alanite and hard ground, I was wearing earplugs but they are not good enough under these circumstances, now everything is good as far as the ears go anyway.

Well I went and checked 2 shafts, the level is at 64 feet where it should be so I did not have to check the 3rd one and I did not get to dirty or dusty or sweaty, must be because it is cold weather, would have been a sweet box down the blind shafts in the summer time as there is no air flow in them. The level is hard to pick up when there is no ironstone to mark it unless there is material or opal in it, but there should always be something there to divided the above the level and below, in the shaft I have the ladders down and checked there is a band of Gypsum around the 64 foot mark and in the first shaft there was a thick band of Alanite and in the second shaft it was a band of Gypsum again, so I will be looking for something like that in the face when I get high enough with the drive, I am hoping that there may be some skin shells around under the level to give me some indication that we are there. The last two days have been good on the machine as far as it can with still going up, I have now got it cutting at the rate of 6 foot an hour, but cannot average this not even close as I have to keep adjusting the angle of incline, fact of life right now, I will explain what the problem is so you all can understand what is going on and what I am on about. As the machine weighs in at 2 TONS and is going up at a 20% angle (2 foot in 10) the full weight of the machine is not on the cutting head as it would be if the machine was on the level and so you could say she is off balance with the machines weight being pushed on its backend, so with the cutting action of the head which is clockwise and the 2 cutters also clockwise, when the cutters on trying to cut into the face, this clockwise action tries to lift the machine up slightly as this cutting is taking place and so the machine goes up a little bit with every rotation/cut and forward motion of the machine. (hope I explained that well enough to be understood by all) Now that I can take a good bite in the wall, this makes the problem even worse as the bigger the cut the more pressure on the teeth and the more it wants to lift the front up, the I will have to wait until I can get her on level ground to see if I am still going to have this problem, if so I will have to pull the machine out of the claim and bring home to put what is called a roof jack on it, have no idea of the cost involved at this stage and this is what most all tunnel machines have on them in one form or another. The big square tunnel machines have ones to anchor them in place to stop the machine from being forced backwards while they take a cut in the face and the small round ones to stop what is happing to me right now going up when going forward, but the guy who built this machine did not put one on, probably thought that the 2 ton weight would be enough, maybe it will be don't know as yet, but as they never had it cutting properly so they would not have known. So at last I am getting somewhere, still a few bugs to get out and a bit of tweaking here and there which I cant do until I am on level ground, its hard enough on the feet just standing in this drive at a 20% angle, but I am heading in the right direction. I recon that when the machine is right I will be able to cut 10 foot per hour on the level ground easy, don't forget that I am losing about 35 per cent of my power going up and I was cutting a foot in 10 minutes yesterday, pity I have to keep cleaning up the angle, still in the last 2 days I have done over 12 feet so I am getting there and I must be very close to the level, hope to see something that next time I go to work.

I don't know if this water here dripping down the pipes is left over from the rain we have just had or if it condensation due to the cold weather nights at the moment, been like this the last 2 days I have been down, but have not seen this much water before some wetness due to condensation but this was actually running down inside the pipes and running out where the telescope comes out of the bottom pipe, of course it stops after I get working, no wonder the old pipes used to rust out, but now have plastic pipes but the telescope and elbow do rust due to moisture.

Well I have reached the level and have started to level the machine off, this I do by backing the machine onto a piece of wood under each track, in this case the wood is 4x4 and after I have gone forward about a 1.5 feet I have to run the machine forward a foot and then back it back onto the wood blocks again, this is because I am on this angle and when the machine has gone forward the 1.5 feet and has run off the wood it goes back to the same angle it was on in the first place so I have to do this 3 times before there is enough floor at the new angle for the machine to sit on and I can continue cutting.

Here is a full view of the face as it is and the machine on the blocks of wood, but I have just realized that I am too close the face to start changing the angle so I have to bring the machine back a few feet and try again, when taking this photo I don't know how far I will have to bring the machine back, as the level in near the bottom of the face, if I had known that this in fact was the level when I cut it I would have left it right at the top of the face, now I have to work on getting the level about 4 foot off the bottom of the drive when I have the machine level again.

Here is the level or 2 at this stage, you have to look real hard as it is not a very strong line here, (bit better close up) the top one is as far as I can tell at this stage the main one and the one underneath is what we call a squibby level or false level, this type of level comes in now and again and can be carrying opal as I have found some opal on this type of level in the past.

If you look at the top of the cutting head you can see how much I have altered the angle of the machine so far, I have will continue this cut for about 5 more feet then I will bring the machine back that 5 feet and start to alter the angle again, so that when I have got the machine back to being level again the level in the face is just above the cutting head, so a bit of work to do yet.

Here you can see the amount of the cut I am taking to go deeper right now, but if you look at that raised bump under the arrow, this tells me that I have a broken tooth again, looks like when I was digging in the floor to start this cut I took too big a bite. What happens is as I bring the machine back on the blocks of wood the front of the machine dips down and when I start cutting the outside cutter has to dig in the side wall and the floor to start this cut, but I should have started this cut off with 2 inch pieces of wood, done a bit and then come back and started again with the 4 inch, making it easier on the cutter, but I didn't and put too much stress on the cutter and teeth, another lesson learned, so now I have to go into Ross's and get the other plates ready with these teeth holders that I have not designed or built as yet, but now have to so I will be off mining for a couple or 3 days until the I have the new cutters ready, then I will come back down and change them over, grease the floor cutters while I am at the front and continue with the drive,

This is a good view of the face as it is now again you can just see the line going across the face that is the level, but what I want to show you is the change of ground above, if you look closely you can see that the ground above the level is somewhat slightly different than below it, this level will in different places get thicker, but doubt if it will get any thinner and hopefully it will be carrying material or opal in places.

Here we have the old outside cutter with all of the teeth cut off, now for the tedious, dirty and noisy job of grinding it clean.

The plate is now cleaned up and ready for me to put the teeth holders (3) on when I have made them, but right now I have to work out what I want to make, how to put them together and then cut the steel for ready making them, now to mark out the plate for where to put them, this has to be done right so the plate is balanced as good as it can be or it may cause some vibration.

Here is the plate with the new teeth holders on them with gussets behind for strength, but again there was some stress cracks also in the plate which I did not expect and did not see then until I have put the teeth holders on, so I have ground out the cracks to a depth of 1/8 inch ready for welding, these are mainly on this side, only 3 had gone right through to the other side.

The plate has finished being welded, I had only 3 small cracks on the other side to fix up now it is cooling down so I can handle it and grind the weld flat and finish it off.

And here is the finished product, in the bottom of the teeth holders I had to drill a 1/2 inch hole through the plate and in the middle of where the teeth sit so that when it is time to remove them I can knock them out from behind, after they have been in for some time the dust etc will cause them to become jammed in and without this hole I would not be able to get them out, looks a bit different to the plate that I put together above and that one did not last long before I broke a tooth, now if this system works for me, I can replace a tooth with little trouble and will not have to bring the cutter in to the workshop unless something else needs repairing on it.

Well what I did is perfect and works just great, now when a tooth needs to be replaced for what ever reason, all have to do is take the cutting plate off and knock the tooth out and replace it straight away, quick or I should say quicker as for the cracks well that will take the test of time to see what happens there and if I was right about the first lot or not, I went to see a friend of mine to ask a question off this morning about why his machine has triangular plates, I thought they may have been cut like that to stop the plate getting stress cracks while cutting, but they were like that when he bought it and so has no idea why they are that shape or for what reason so I got no help there. Still leveling off the machine and still not 100% sure about this level, I was and now I am not still not sure if I am up high enough, the more I think about it and look at the drive the more and what I think is the level the more I am not sure, so I have made my mind up to get a Prospect Drill as they only drill about a 9 inch hole and are reasonably cheap to come and drill a hole down to the 64 foot level, will try and find one next week, then I will know for sure if I am right or wrong, so right now I cannot go forward any more... Here you can see that I have leveled off the machine quite a lot, in fact the drive is now some 3 foot 4 inches lower and still have to come down another 8% yet, but as I said I am not sure which line is the level as yet in front of me and as there are 2 lines, one of which will be the level, but which one, nothing in either to tell me at this stage.

Still in a quandary about that drive and level, the reason is not that I am inexperienced or anything like that, but it is very hard for anybody here no matter how long you have been mining when you go up to another level and the level is not to well defined as we say, this has happened to my friend Boro some years ago he tells me, they went up a level and picked it wrong and so mined for a while finding nothing before they gave it away, turned out some time later that they missed out on a lot of opal as they were working under it and someone else got it later. Then we have a couple more friends of mine that have worked together since before I came here, they used to do pillar bashing and work with a blower also drilling and blasting, anyway one day they were down this tunnel machine claim, don't know if it was a round or square one but they were pillar bashing and finally they came around to drill the roof in this drive and hit opal, $112,000.00, the tunnel machine had gone straight under it by missing the level. After this they bought there tunnel machine, just go to prove that we have to be very careful about the level we are trying to work on and if we get it wrong it can cost us dearly, that is why Boro says that the only way to tell where the level really is we must drill a shaft in  front of us. The small hole that I want drill is not a really shaft but a prospect hole as that is what it is called and what it will do if I get the measurement and angle spot on, the drill should come through the roof of the drive not far from the face and then when it has finished and gone I can run the tape measure down to 64 feet and go underground and check where it against the face only then will I know where exactly where 64 foot mark is.

Well again the best laid out plans don't always work for me, it would seem that I cannot get a Prospect Drill right now, they all seem to be busy drilling on a field about 50 kilometers from here called Alan's Rise, so I have had to change my plans, I was going to try and carry both of lines that are in front of me, by putting the machine in the middle of them so I could see what is going on in them as I go forward. But after thinking about it over night and finding out this morning about the Prospect Drills and most Caldwell Drills as well, I decided to go with my gut feeling and chase the bottom line that I was already doing and it did not take long to see that I was right, it was the level, here below you can see that the ground is changing above the level, this is what I was looking for, a change of ground, still not a strong level, but it is the level and I still have 5% to alter the machine as yet to get it level.

In this photo you can see a definite change in the ground color, this is what we refer to as a change of ground and in-between is the level, if we are lucky if can be an ironstone level but as I have said before the ironstone  levels are not everywhere, normally it is either Alanite or Gypsum and a combination of both with a definite line and as the ground is constantly on the change as you go forward we never know what is in front of us, hard ground, soft ground or a mixture of both.

Here we are about 18 inches later than above and you would not think I was in the same drive, the ground is really changing right now, there must be a fault nearby for the ground to be this disturbed, the last 3 photo all have been taken within 3 feet of drive as I only did 3 foot 7 inches today, the machine now is on the level.

But I have broken down at this point, just as I was going to finish for the day, the outside cutter is jamming, I can go backward and forward but it will not spin, this cutter is driven by a chain from the hydraulic motor and I think that a chain tensioner that is in the box has come loose or broken loose, so I will have to bring the machine all the way back down the drive to work on it, where there is room to walk around the machine etc. Anyway I am ready for drilling a shaft now in front of the machine, then I will connect to it and open up ready for moving the blower onto it when ready, so tomorrow I will be looking for a Caldwell Drill to come and drill for me, there was one near me today drilling but had moved by the time I have finished for the day, I know where he is and who he is an he is still not far from me so will ask him if he can come and drill for me when I can find him personally. Here is the machine at the top of the drive, back on level ground and starting to drive on the new level, you will be able to see the new shaft from here in the roof when it is drilled, going to be a pain in the ass having to carry all of the pipes up and down here, its times like this I wish I had a partner, still we do what we can do in a morning and I don't kill myself just take it easy and what gets done, gets done, always tomorrow to do a bit more.

I have the machine at the bottom of the drive so I can walk around it and I have removed the cutter and drained the oil that I had in the chain box, now I have removed the front plate to see what has happened inside, not much to see here so will have to inspect all the moving parts in here to see what the noise is and what caused the cutter to stop rotating.

Well this cannot be good, there are partials of steel on the bottom of the box, so something has gone wrong with the sprockets teeth also the Allan Key Bolt that holds the outside sprocket on has come loose and has let the sprocket move forward and it looks like the chain has been catching on the side of the sprockets teeth and the chain tensioner teeth which is in the middle at the bottom, the chain being new has stretched which is to be expected, but I should have removed this plate some time ago and redone the tension (taken up the slack) then perhaps this would not have happened, of well still have a lot to learning to do about preventive maintenance.

Here is the part that needs to be replaced, as you can see the chain has worn down the top of the teeth rendering it useless, the big sprocket next door the one that has the cutter is bolted to it is also damaged on a few teeth but not enough to have to replace it right now, I have a new part ordered and when it arrives I will take the bearing out of this one and put it in the new one as this bearing is new and done very little work.

Now I have to replace a couple of pieces of rubber on the cutting head, do a modification to the rubbers at the side of the floor cutters, tweak up the torque on a couple of hydraulic controls, put the chain box back together and add new oil after I have cleaned it out, then grind and sharpen 56 cutting teeth and I should be ready for work again.  As of now the end of the month the part still has not come, but should be here tomorrow Friday (I hope) I still have a lot to do yet but would like the part ASAP so I can at least get the machine up and running, then if I still cannot get drill for a few days I can do another dive on the bottom level or maybe go back into one of the old ones and go a bit further. I will find something to do while I have to wait for a drill to become available, perhaps mark out another spot for a shaft to be drilled in the future (about a 10 minute job) and I may have to clean up and level the ground a bit with the front end loader for these shafts to be drilled and then move the dirt from the shaft after it is drilled, which may be a morning work, 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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