Opal Mining Newsletter October-31, 2006 on Mining Underground for Opals in Coober Pedy

Here we are in a new month already, boy the time sure goes quick when you are having fun, just cant wait for the fun to start, just to start the month off while I am broke down I have taken a brother of a friend of mine downunder to have a look, and as I can not show him the machine in action he had a good look at it and I explained how it worked, I did show him the floor cutters in action as I put some sump oil on it to keep it lubricated while it is not working, but that was it as far as the machine went.

I took him down so I could show him how we do or I do Pillar Bashing as it is called, that is the pillars that have been left in between the drives and after I have finished in one area if there is anything in the side walls of interest I will drill under the level and take the material out, never know I may have missed some opal, this most tunnel machine operators leave for others, but not me as I have spent the money putting the drives in I deserve anything that is in there, not the pillar bashers.

By the way some of these pillar bashers, do not do it like I have here, they also put shots in (use of explosives, ie: bombs) but only if they strike color, now it is getting very hard to use explosives here due to the government changing the rules on storing them in this town, that is one off the reasons that there are becoming less opal miners, explosives, if I had to still rely on them I would have quit mining for sure by now, too much hassle, thankfully I have this tunnel machine.

So here is Roger from Melbourne, he is a bit taller than me at six foot 2 inches and I am 5 foot 11 inches tall, but as you can see he has plenty of room to work in, not like other round tunnel machine that leave dirt on the floor for it travel on and that reducing the head room 6 to 9 inches, I/we are drilling a series of holes under the level where there is potch in it, so I asked Roger to take over while I took the photo so I could show you the drill in action, this is called a prospecting drill, the auger drills a 4 and a half inch diameter hole and I can go in 2 1/2 feet with it, here I am only drilling in for 15 inches.

You can see here that I have been in this Alinite for quite a few feet no, there is almost 8 feet showing in the photo here, the tunnel machine is 7 feet 9 inches long, and just to let you the readers know that I only work my machine between 3 and 4 hours a shift, and depending on what I am tunneling through and if I have to stop and have a gig in the face I may average about 4 foot an hour, it can cut in good ground at the rate of 8 foot an hour but I cannot average that as I have to stop and add another pipe now and again, then I have to correct the machine for being level or change the angle to keep the level where I want it, etc so all takes time including stopping and taking the photos.

I have had to alter the angle of the machine as I was going up on a slight angle and the level has decided to level out that took me about 12 minutes to do, as I have to bring the machine back about 4 feet and put a inch thick piece of timber under each track before I start to bring it back this helps to tile the machine downwards as it goes back, then I start it cutting again as it goes forward, this then starts to cut on a downward angle, normally I use the floor cutters for this.

But have been having trouble getting the machine to respond which I have to look into when this drive is finished, also the floor cutters are cutting to deep on the right hand side which make the machine lean on a angle in that direction, which makes the tunnel in a slow right hand curve, this I also have to look into after this drive when I do the maintenance on it, anyway the pieces of timber are a quick way to change the angle and if I want to take the machine at a steeper angle I can use 2 inch thick timber, or if I want the machine to go up quick I do the same but put it under the front of the tracks.

Now we have a good level and it has started to dive across the face from right to left, but I have only seen 2 pieces of material so far in this drive and both were color, one was a piece of green skin shell that came in right in the right hand corner of the drive and the other was a bit of seam if I can call it that, it was also green but was only a very small piece about 1/2 inch wide and 3mm thick or there about and as I am roughly about 62 feet into this drive from the elbow that is it, far enough in the 4 days it has taken me so am happy with that as I have had no break downs or stoppages for a change, now to pull the pipes and bring the machine back to the ballroom and then I will some maintenance to it and a small modification that I have been thinking about for a while.

The modification I am about to do is to remove this 3 inch angle iron that I have bolted to the front of the crusher box, (this was my first idea and modification) I have already cut the back half off this plate as it was another idea of mine to lengthen this plate from 3 inches wide to 6 inches wide to keep more dirt from getting to the front of the tracks and it worked, but what happened was it hindered the machine from going down at an angle when pushing the hydraulics down for the floor cutters.

So I cut the second plate off that I had added which made some improvement not did not solve the problem, it did stop some of the dirt from sliding in front of the tracks which is why I put it on in the first place, so I have to try something else, as what happens is that when the floor cutter is forced down to cut into the floor and as the machine moves forward cutting this plate which is what the angle iron is bolted slowly slides down and follows the angle of the cutters, this takes about 4 foot to do as the machine has to travel half its length before it will tilt over and then the tracks follow the new angle, but this angle iron I have now at the front hinders this from happening in a reasonable length, so I have to do something about it, if it is only a slight angle it should start to react within about 2.5 feet.

So I have come up with this new idea, I am going to take this angle iron off both sides, only have to use a chisel to cut the bolt heads off this will leave the crusher box as it was when I got the machine and I am going to spot weld these 2 brackets I have made above onto each side of the machine where the track wheels are located and then put a bolt a plate on to this bracket to take up the gap, worth a try anyway.

Here is the bracket welded in place and the arrows show the gap I have to close off, what happens is that when the floor cutters are working and the machine is going forward there is a gap between the front plate and the (left hand corner of photo) side of the wall and as the cutters are cutting there is some fine dirt thrown through this gap and it builds up in a pile, then when it as reached high enough it starts to slide sideways and under the front of the tracks, which in turn causes the machine to start going up and the further you go the more it goes up, so I had to continually keep bringing the machine back to correct this, hence the side angle plate which worked, but caused another small problem, now to try and overcome that one, I call it tweaking the machine to get the best out of it.

And here is the side plate that I have put on, this is only a temporary plate as it is thin Aluminum and was the easiest way for me to make where the holes were to be drilled, could not do this before I weld the brackets on as I did not know exactly at what angle they would finish up at, now this may work it may not, but what I have in mind is to do a couple of drives with this pale on the see what the effect is than I will take it off and cut a 1/8 inch metal plate but half the depth and then I will cut and bolt on a piece of conveyer belt rubber so it will be flexible on the bottom, and now that I am thinking about it I may also be able to do this with the angle plate I have just taken off if this is not successful, just a matter of trial and error.

Looks like the new idea did not last long, about 6 inches into this drive, I knew that the width would be tight as the bolt heads seemed to be sticking out a bit to far and they were, I should have measured this distance when I was in a drive, but did not think of it then, so now it is back to the original angle plate that I have just taken off and I will modify that tomorrow at Ross's, as you can see I only tacked bronzed these bolts on the plate and so this one got ripped off, the other side I had to knock off as it was not inside the dive at this time, as the machine was going in at an angle, the plates I will leave there and if in the future I need to take them off I will.

Here you can see the level and the machine going up on a 10% angle, I know this because I have a angle gauge that I put on the machine so I know what angle I am working at and I use it only when am going up and when I want to correct it to being on the level again, I did about another 4 feet or so after this photo and finished for the day as I had to change over pipes and put on the 6 foot telescope, so thought I would leave it there and then I will bring it back to put the angle plates back on, but modified on Wednesday morning.

I have had the last week off, due to a little rain we had on the Monday and then it looked like it was going to rain on Tuesday so I went to Ross's and built the brackets, also it was blowing a gale as well, then I came out on Wednesday and put them on along with the servicing, and then for the rest of the week it also looked like it was going to rain so stayed at home, do not like being underground if and when it rains it is dangerous mixing electricity and water and its not that I am not protected with special switches I am, but I still do not trust the wet weather, accidents do happen and I do not want it to happen to me, so better to be safe than dead.

So this is what I have done to the angle side plates that I have just taken off and tried to replace with that bad idea above, I should have thought of this in the first place but funny how the mind works when you are trying to solve problems, as they sometimes you cannot see the wood for the trees and in this case it was true, this is the simplest way to overcome my problem, replacing the bottom 3 inches of metal with rubber conveyor belt which will now bend, why I never thought of this when I first built them I will never know, still the older we get the smarter we get, right, Wrong.........

This is what it used to look like, first I made it 3 inches wide as that is the width of the angle iron, then I added another 3 inches on, this was good for stopping the dirt from getting in front of the tracks but really stopped the front of the machine from going down so I quickly cut that extra 3 inches off and went back to normal, then after a few months thought about that idea above and now we are back to square one.

Now this is what it looks like now, simple and works well, you can see that I have done a drive with it, well part of a drive anyway, the only thing that I will have to keep my eye on now and again is the bolt heads as they will rub against the side wall every so often and will eventually wear through, but that will take a long time so no need to worry about that for a while.

Funny thing about doing modifications, what think about and do while the machine is up top is not the same as looking at the machine while its working underground, like the sea I built and then had to bring back up and modify, then it turns out I don't have time to sit on it anyway and have taken it off the machine altogether, so sometimes you have to work the machine to see what can be done while it is in a drive and this is what I failed to do with this above, I looked at it when out of the drive in the open and came up with a completely different idea of making something that would follow the tracks instead of modifying what I had in place, which was the easiest as it turns out.

I have finished this drive already (far right) as the ground has got far to wet for me, I have already unblocked the elbows and after just doing 1 foot 10 inches I was having to wait until the telescope behind the machine was cleared of dirt, which means that the elbows are starting to block up again and restricting the vacuum, so that tells me it is time to quit, to slow and costly working in that dirt now for me and I will not do it any more, so I have brought the machine back and turned it around ready to start another drive and I had to move some of the equipment so I can start this next drive as it is going back towards the big shaft towards a pocket of potch that I cut some weeks ago.

I may go back in the drive that is second from the left as that is the drive that I broke down in because of that hard Alinite, I do not think that I have far to go to get through it about 2 or 3 feet at the most and than I may have a chance of some material being in the level, so will see what happens when I have finished doing the drives where I am now.

This is the start of the latest drive and the tunnel on the right is the main drive back to the big shaft and the drive that I will have to take the machine and all the equipment back to the big shaft so I can take it out of the claim when I am finished altogether, I am driving back to where I found that large pocket of potch near the floor, I left some still in the side wall, I want to see if there is more in there and perhaps some opal as the level that the potch is in was traveling in a upwards direction and I have found opal on the top of potch like this before, some verticals are like this opal on the top 1/4 and potch on the bottom 3/4 of it, hard to work opal out, how it forms and where.

Here we are at the end of the shift, I have done 13 foot today and I have a round 6 and half feet to go to reach the pocket of potch in front of me, will get there tomorrow, I will dig out what I find and hope for some color in there and that may be the end of this drive as I have a hand drive to the left of this one that I did from where the big shaft is, so no point in going further left at this point, lucky for me that so far this ground is pretty dry and hope it stays like that until I have finished it.

I will be going right across to the other side of the drive from here and doing a short drive to come in the back door of a drive that I found a nice parcel of opal that was red grey and red crystal, to see if there is anymore in there, I think I stopped the drive for wet ground, not sure I may have been far enough out from the shaft at the time, normally I only work out some 50 feet from the shaft, then I will work backwards to that drive from the next shaft which is what I am doing now and connect to make sure I have not missed anything.

Again I have not done a lot of work this month, mainly because I am sick of working in this wet ground, but we have had a few days that it has looked like rain and I don't like going out on those days so tend to stay at home, couple of small running repairs to the machine one that did not work out as you read above.

I am not that far off looking for another claim as this one is not producing any opal right now, I know that there is more around and I have plenty of virgin ground in front of me but as it is the bottom level it is to wet for me in most places, this wet ground is to costly and slow to mine, so time to move on soon, just have to try and find a good spot which is not that easy to do.

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, 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 as far as Opal Mining goes.

Not been a good year so far this financial year which starts from July for opal, but I have a long way to go for the rest of the year, we have just made our mind up where we are going on holidays this next year, thankfully to my wife still working and maybe I will find a bit of opal in the next 3 months for a bit of pocket money, we are going over to the West.

Perth in Western Australia that is, we will be there for the first week visiting our youngest son Jason and his family, he has 2 girls and one of them if you remember from awhile back had that Tumor on the brain that was successfully operated on and I am happy to say is well on the way to recovery, wont be staying with him as he does not have the room, then we will be going up to a town called Kalbarri.

Some 590 kilometers (377 Miles) north from Perth and we are this time going to do what I love the most, Deep Sea Fishing, real fishing and catching I hope some real big fish and some of them can be seen here at this link so you will know what we have a chance of showing you next year www.murchisonboathirefishing2006.blogspot.com we will be there for 7 weeks, so have a good chance for a few good days, wont take many to fill the freezer and most are real top table fish, not those little whiting we were catching this year, use them for bait this time.

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, 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 as far as Opal Mining goes.

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.

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