October 31, 2007 Opal Mining Update - No 78 Not a good month Again, due to Hard Ground

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So here I am at the start of another Month, lets hope it will be better then the last few, in particular last month, I have now cleaned out the drive floor with the floor cutters which acted like a vacuum cleaner and now back to the face again as you can see, not a full face as yet still got the hole in the middle from the blast, but I can now start tunneling again, just hope that I do not run into anymore rocks.

Have not gone a foot and I have hit another rock, so will now stop and start to jack pick it out, lets hope it is a small one.

Yep just another smallish one and as you can see round corners that are left anyway, I have cut one end off and so is a river Rock, did not take much digging out thankfully, so now I can carry on with the tunneling, still not past the blast depth as yet, so still a chance of more.

Another few inches and another small rock has popped up in the face, lucky for me again it was a very small one, broke in two as I was jacking it out and went up the pipes, so is this the last, I hope so, the alinite is also clearing up in the top half of the drive so I hope it will not be long before I am in clean ground and the level comes back in preferably with material in it if not opal at some stage.

Saturday the 6th, all of the alinite has now gone for a while anyway and we are back to a full face again, now to get a way from this fault or what ever it is and head for the shaft, so far the levels have not settled down as yet as you can tell by looking at the face on the right, see brown ironstone lines everywhere, like varicose veins this tells me that the ground is still disturbed somewhat, so until the levels come back in I have no chance to find any material never mind opal.

Another couple of feet and the ground has changed as you can see now I have this large lump of hard alinite above were the 73 foot level should be, the 76 foot level has come back in, but not the top one as yet, I also have hard alinite on the floor which is causing me some problems as well, between the pair of them it is slow cutting again, never seem to be able to get up a full head of steam in this ground.

The Gremlins have struck again, the floor cutters stopped working, so brought the machine back about 3 feet, I had jus6t put on a new length of pipe as well, so had to remove the 6 foot telescope to bring the machine back so I could get in front to inspect what has gone wrong, at first I thought it was the chain link pin spring clip that had come off again, allowing the chain to separate, but on closer inspection it is a bit more serious than that. At the top of the photo you can just see the bottom half of the chain sprocket that is attached to the hydraulic motor that drives the chain, well the bracket that holds this motor in place and also is bolted to the framework as broken allowing the motor to fall away and the chain has fell off, so I just packed up and came home as it was 11:30 am and in no mood to start pulling things apart, do not know if I can do it in the drive or have to pull the machine all the way back out of the drive, I need to prop up the cutting head so the inside cutter which is what you can see here in the bottom left of photos is out of the way, then I should be able to get it off by myself, but will need a hand to put it back on like last time I had this off with broken bolts as I cannot hold it up and put the bolts in at the same time, it has to be held up from the front as we are looking at it now and the bolts have to put in from the left side of the photo and then be tightened up.

After I had broke down last Saturday, I was starting to come down with a cold and so I have had the last 4 days at home and did not get out to the claim to take this unit off until this morning, Thursday the 11th, so here it is, you can see where it has broken, this is a steel plate that has the bracket welded on it so it can be bolted to the machine, after examining this at length it seems that it as this is working in hard ground driving the chain to the floor cutters, this hydraulic motor is flexing a little, it is not supported enough, in soft g round this would not be a problem but in hard ground as I am in right now on the floor it is making this sprocket work a lot harder and causing it to move forwards and backwards, every so slightly but never the less putting stress on it until it has broken.

Not only did it break the front supporting bracket which is all I saw at the time and now I have it home in the sunlight you can see it also has broke the hydraulic motor housing which is made from Cast Iron, as the front plate broke the force of the chain pulling against this caused the weak corner to break, now I have more to repair, the housing is going to be a problem, but I may be able to weld that piece back on and then weld a strap across the corner to help support and strengthen it, don't know until I get to the workshop tomorrow. I may have to cut a new plate for the front and make it stronger, then I would have to drill and tap the bolt holes, also make another plate to replace the one you can see the bolt in and then weld it on, then I will have to go back on the field to the tunnel machine with the length measurements for this motor and see if I can some how run a support bracket from a bolt at the back end of the motor to the floor cutters frame some how, right now I cannot see it in my head and not sure it can be done, but will have to have a look to make sure, be a couple of days work here for sure.

Did not get a lot done on Friday, Ross was busy so did not get the new plate cut for me, but I managed to get the old bracket off the motor and cut if off its base plate, I have straightened it the best I can with the help of the oxy and managed to tack weld it back together so I could screw the bolt back in, as it broke straight across the bolt hole being the weakest point, I will now use this old plate to make the position of the holes in the new plate, I will also have to cut and drill a new base plate later on, that the narrow one on the right.

Saturday 13th, I have now marked the plate out so Ross can now come and cut it with the oxy for me, I could have done this but Ross likes to do the oxy cutting of his thick plate, I suppose to make sure none gets wasted, anyway this plate is 5/8ths thick, the old one was 1/2 inch thick so I decided I would make it stronger this time, you can see I have drilled a hole in the plate this is so the oxy torch can start cutting,  this hole allows the flame to go thought the plate and so can start the heating and cutting a lot easier than if it was not there, now to get Ross to cut it out, then I can get on with the job.

Here as you can see the hole being cut in the plate first then it will be cut around the edges and when it has cooled down I will clean it up with the small angle grinder so I can set it up to be marked for the holes to be drilled tapped with threads for the bolts that hold the motor.

Bit out of focus as the flash did not go off or I did not set it on flash but you get the idea, I have clamped the old bracket plate onto the new plate that has just been cut out and have marked where the holes are to be drilled with the drill already, now to take the clamps off and drill them properly after I make sure that all is correct, only get one shot at this, if one hole is out so I cannot get a bolt screwed in I will have to cut a new plate out and start again, if all is good then I will tap the holes ready for the bolts, after that I will make a new base plate for it and drill that also, but I do not have to tap the holes in that one as it is just to put bolts through so It can be bolted back on the tunnel machine.

Now Monday the 15th, here is the plate with the holes drilled and now I am tapping the threads in it for the bolts, after this I will have to cat a new base plate for it and also drill holes in that, so then I can weld in on the bottom of this plate.

Here is the plate with the holes finished and the new base plate I have cut, the thickness of the bottom plate is the same as the old one 1/2 inch as this is thick enough, but as Ross did not have the same width plate as the old one 65mm, I used what he had so this new one is 90mm wide and as I have plenty of room where this bolts on I have left it this wide, the nuts that I have bolted in position are to be welded in place as there is very little room between the hydraulic motor and this plate on one side to get the nut in position when putting the unit back on the machine, so better to weld them in position, one less thing to worry about. What I did find when I was using the old plate as a template for making these holes was that after I had marked them out I noticed that the 2 holes on the right side as you look at it here was lower then the ones on the left by 3/4 of a hole, also the spacing on one was 1 - 5/8ths and the other on the bottom was 1 - 9/16ths, so I made then both 1 - 5/8ths apart and hope I guessed right as the plate that this is bolted to is also hand made, so I hope they worked in 1/8ths of an inch, but who ever did the job in the first place was not good at there job, very amateurish, I have always noticed this motor on a slight angle now I know why, so hoping this has done some good and will also take some pressure off the chain sprocket and this bracket if the sprocket is now running more true than it was.

This is how I managed to hold the parts together so I could tack weld them in place, I had to make sure it was all square before I started, now I will take it from here to a large vise and hold it that while I weld it up, I will do it in stages so the bottom plate does not pull (bend) while it is being welded like it did when the machine was built, if I weld it all in one go the bottom plate will bend for sure, but will check after and grind the bottom dead flat if there is any bend at all, then this plate is finished, it has now been welded and just needs painting. I did not manage to get the motor housing done today as I would have liked, my feet or right foot was hurting, boots to small I recon and my left knee also will get new boots again when I go on holidays, so packed it in around 1:30 pm and came home will finished the rest tomorrow.

Tuesday 16th, Here is the unit finished and the motor bolted back on, I have where the arrows are welded back on the broken piece of the housing, which on its own is not strong enough although I did a good job or so I think anyway, but have put this 3mm strap over the corner and tack welded it in place, now it should be strong enough to hold on and I also took out the 4 bolts that are looking at you  at the front of the housing and turned that end 180% around so that corner is across from where it was in the first place when this gets bolted back in place, now there will be no stress on that anymore in its the new position.

And here is the unit from the front, all ready for going back down and refitting back on the machine, I have a Mate of mine Dave again coming with me to help me out as it is not an easy job putting it back in place, so if I have done everything right it will be back on in the morning, then put 3 hydraulic hoses back on and everything should work, says I, been wrong before, hopefully not this time.

Turns out that the bolt holes were perfect, but we did have problems putting it back on the machine, as I have made the bracket 1/8 of an inch wide, which was no problem but I also made the plate 1/2 inch wider on 3 sides and this was no good for one side and it was the side that has TOP marked on it, again the idiot that made this in the first place did not know what he was doing, the plate that this bolts onto has 4 elongated holes in it so the chain can be adjusted as it stretches and I have never had to adjust the chain so far, but as it turns out and I could see on the old one, where this bracket fits under and into the floor cutter assembly he had left no room to maneuver. There was hardly any clearance at all between the top of this plate, (that's the original one) and the support bracket that is welded onto and above this plate with the 4 elongated holes, so this plate that I added 1/2 inch to is to big and it has to cut off, we did this twice as Dave missed marking it right in the first place, so when I had finally got it back to where it was in the first place and we got the unit bolted on at last there is no room for me to adjust the chain, although the elongated holes are one inch long, for what I have no idea, another stuff up by the designer or his assistant who did the job for him. It needs for the bracket with the elongated holes to be dropped down about an inch at least, in fact it needs a new bracket made as the holes in this original one are not that good, not sure what they used to do the job with, but it really needs to be done in a Milling Machine with an 7/16 end mill to do the job properly and the machine needs to be out and in Ross's workshop for me to do it, so as it is working well as it is right now and giving me any grief it will stay as it is and I will forget about it like I have never seen it and carry on mining. So Tomorrow first thing when I get down is I have to put a new bolt in as one was broken and I did not notice so that is a 5 minute job, that I have to replace the teeth on the inside cutter as I am trying out a different type of teeth which are supposed to be better in hard ground which I seem to find myself in more just lately, I have already got these on the outside cutter and are doing a good job on the hard alinite, but the inside ones are struggling, I know they need sharpening but because they are wide and flat still do not like this type of ground so as this hard alinite is across the face right now, it is a good time to try these out, so these will be working tomorrow and I will soon notice if there is any difference, so now lets hope I can do some tunneling for while before the Gremlins decide to have another go at me. Thursday 18th, put the new bolt in and had to check the chain to try and find the spring clip that holds the chain link joiner together as yesterday, Dave could not find it and we had to put the motor back on with the chain already sitting on the sprocket, not the easiest way to do it for him having to get it in place and hold it up while I got a bolt started, as I said he did it and all was well, but I have lost this spring clip before and the chain fell off, so I had to find it this morning to make sure it was still on the chain and it is, thankfully. Then I got the tools for taking the cutting plate off and went back in front of the machine to do the job, got the plate off and the old teeth out, but had trouble in fitting the new teeth, could only get one to sit right down in the holder, seems that the shank on these new teeth is a little thicker or at least some of them, I had trouble with one when I put them in the outside cutting plate when I had it off and repaired it, but it was the tooth holder that I repaired so I figured that I had made that tooth holder a bit narrower down the bottom end when I repaired it, but I now have the same problem with 2 of these teeth that I was trying to replace today. I had to take the plate off again and knock out the 2 teeth that would not go right in and as I had left the bag at home with the small grinders in I could not do the job today, so will take them down with me tomorrow and grind a bit off the shanks at the bottom end until they fit in the holders, then I will bolt the plate back on and silastic the teeth in, connect the telescope to the machine, go up and start the blower and start tunneling, at last and see how we go this time, happy to say that the hydraulic motor is now sitting straight, before it was on an slight angle.

Friday 19th, finally got the new teeth in, did not take long to grind and fit them in the holders about five minutes, than I put the cutting plate back on and fitted the teeth in with some Silastic on them, this is enough to hold them in, then after putting the grinder and tools away it was at last back to business, tunneling and how good it was at last. Here you can see that the Alinite is getting lees in the face also that the ironstone level has come back in just under it, the right side of the floor is still full of this hard Alinite and is slowing up the cutting, the new teeth are doing a better job so far than the flat tungsten ones did, hope this hard ground does not last too long.

Thought I would give you a look backwards to the pipes and elbow from where I am, give you some idea how much I have gone up from the floor below, the level in the  face now just under the alinite is the 73 foot level, so I am up about 5 and a half feet.

The Alinite is receding slowly and the level is becoming stronger, on the far left a small piece of potch came in the level right up new the corner, but again it was now you see it now you don't, but who knows what is in front to me, all know is that the shaft that I am heading for has potch in it at this level about half way round in on the right had side as I am heading for it now, so between here and there I have around 50 plus feet to go, so there may be a chance of finding something.

I am now past the Alinite on the right side, just, as you can see it went for quite a long way more then you can see here, but it is still in the floor at this point, so the cutting rate is still slow, but I am just happy to be back at work, I see today when I got a drum of diesel that it had gone up .05 cents a liter since the last one I bought and as a drum of oil has now hit US$90.00 a barrel it will probably be higher with the next drum I buy.

And on the left side of the drive is the level plain to see and easy to follow, still nothing to talk about as yet, just think this used to be the sea floor many millions of years ago.

Bit more Alinite has come in again on the right hand side and I have had some potch come in the face where the arrow is with a touch of color in it, almost exciting but I need more than this to have a party.

Looks like I am crossing another fault of some kind again, the ground has become unsettled, you can see the face is not clean above or below the level, this is called disturbed ground and also it has turned into damp ground again, I have just finished for the day as the elbows are blocked up again so I took this photo on my way out of the drive, I have only done 4 foot 6 inches today in one and a half hours, again not good, this ground is not good for mining in, if its not hard and dry its too wet, I did a measure today and I am out 60 feet out from the elbow right now and that means I have around 36 feet to go to the shaft, plus another 10 feet past it, so again I may not get there if the ground stays like this. If I cannot reach the shaft this time I will give the claim away for sure as it is getting to expensive with the fuel to keep messing around in this type of ground when it is not paying its way, so will be forced to look for another spot, will not be easy as it is a big and expensive job moving a tunnel machine and setting it up again, one of the reasons I have stayed here so long, but looks like my time may have come at last, but will hang in for as long as I can, Monday I will clean the elbows again and carry on, never know the ground may change again.

So here we are at the start of another day, I have already done the top elbow before coming down to tackle this one, not a nice job as I have just taken this off the pipes and boy is it heavy 1/2 full at the top and 3/4 full in the middle and as I work by myself it can also be dangerous, the last time I did this  at the end of the last drive, I let it slip and it fell sideways onto the top part of my leg and a couple of days later I had a nice bruise that lasted more than week and that was not as full or heavy as this one is, anyway now to clean it out.

So here I go, lucky I now use the jackpick with a special tool that I made for this purpose, in the old days before I got more brains I use to do this by hand with a bar with a chisel point on it and it took forever and after I was finished I used to be worn out, now its a lot easier, but this still took me more than 15 minutes to get done, then the hard part is putting it back on the telescope by myself, this is were I wish I had a partner, as the elbow is sitting up off the ground and on a milk crate, it is a bit of a balancing act trying to hold it up and get it in position, then holding the 2 flanges together while I bend down and pick up the clamp and get it on, bit tricky and takes me a few minutes but I get it done.

Now back to work, see how long I last today before I am forced to stop with blocked up elbows again, Have not be going long and I have come across some blue material in the face and a thin vertical right in the middle, so now to check it out and hope for the best, I need a bit of good luck right about now.

Turns out this is potch with electric blue in it, run in for about 3 inches but no opal, but at least I can say I have seen some color, the thin vertical did not last long but did have a some color to it but also it not worth anything but encouragement.

And so the end has come, did 4 foot - 10 inches and have had to pack it in for blocked up elbows again, so this is the end of this drive and again I did not reach the shaft, but would have done me no good as this is too wet for me to work in, but would have liked to see what if anything was around the shaft other than potch, tomorrow I will bring the pipes and tunnel machine back out of this drive, stack the pipes back up and get the machine ready for another drive, have to replace a rubber strip on the edge of the cutting arm, its getting worn out. You can also see in the photo that the ground is still not good and the level has at this point split up, still not good worrying about it now it is finished, I have a bit more to do below before I move on, I have to work my way back to the big shaft, so I still have a few short drives to do before I call it quits in this claim, I will work here until I get back from holidays next year as it is too late for me to find and register another claim right now. The reason being that when we register a claim for the first time it can only be done for three months and then it can be registered for one year, this is to try and stop people coming up here from the cities and registering claims for other miners then going back to were they live, this makes it a bit harder for them, but it is still done anyway, as for me well I am going on holidays at the end of January and with traveling time I will be away from here for nine weeks. And as the law requires us to work our claim for 20 hours a week, I have to be here although they do have a period over Christmas that we are allowed to be on holidays for about 10 weeks I think it is and that finishes around the 15th of March and I get back at the end of March, so I just make it before they start to get on my ass, so there really is no time to move and peg and register another claim before I go away, when I new claim is registered they keep a pretty close eye on us to se if we are doing any work, as a lot of miners just peg claims and leave them for later as they are using other people pegs, (mentioned above about this) so if I cannot be here for the first few weeks or months no point in doing it.

Friday 26th, Cleaned the top elbow yesterday and then started checking some dumps near me for material on them, I then got carried away and went away from my claim and checked a few others and that was it for the morning then I went home as it was getting warm in the sun, here is the machine now after I have just brought it back down the drive I have just finished, I took one photo with the flash and one without, the one with the flash does not show the mud as clearly as this one, the front of the machine shows you just how wet the ground was, this is very funny ground I am working in here, some of it is dry then it goes to damp or like in the last drive straight to wet, it is in patches but basically the ground is damp at this depth for the most part.

I have turned the machine to start another drive, but I went down a couple of the drives to refresh my memory, one drive to the right has material in the level on both sides of the drive almost right up to the face which I finished because of wet ground and is 80 feet out from the telescope here in the photo, then I went down the one next to it on the left and I stopped this drive around 60 feet in because of hard alinite and if you can remember this drive and ground took all of the tungsten off the middle teeth and broke a couple of the outside teeth, so as I have these new type of teeth that are better in this hard ground I have decided that I will go back in and see how far I can get, there is a chance of opal in this drive, if I can get another 20 feet and get the same distance out as the drive on the right, so I will have a go and see.

I greased up the machine and put a little oil and grease in the cutting head chain box, then I went and put it up this drive and connected the pipes again, it is now ready for starting work the next time I go down, which will be Monday as I have to work on some jewelry taking photos, editing them and putting them in the web site, always busy at something, I will measure how far into this drive I am before I start, nice to know how far out I get from the shaft.

Monday 29th, This is what the face looks like before I start, the last time I was here I broke the 3 middle cutters right in the center of the cutting head, so I pulled out and abandoned the drive, but now I have these new teeth on I will try and get through this hard Alinite and hope that I am on material if not opal on the other side on it.

Well in the first hour I only did 1 foot - 2 inches, boy is this hard, I suppose because there is so much of it in the face, but the new teeth are cutting a lot better than the old ones, I have never had this much or such hard ground as this, hope it does not last long.

Was a mistake going back in this drive, I only did 2 foot and the machine could not take the vibration anymore, I have broken something in the chain box that drives the outside cutter, hope it is not too bad when I get it apart, also the right hand side light has broken down though the vibration as well, so will have to pull that off and see if I can repair it as we don't sell this brand of light here the others are a bit bigger, I never thought of buying a couple of spares when I got these up from Adelaide, anyway I may be able to fix it. Tuesday 30th, did not go back on the field we are having some serious winds this month and can expect more next month as well, so as it was overcast and cold I stayed at home, will do some work on the web site and I have pulled the light apart and it can be fixed, will have to buy a new one here, I only need the part that holds the globe in as there are all the same so it will fit in mine, as for the tunnel machine don't know as yet. High winds again yesterday and overcast all day, rain was forecast but we did not get any until around 10:15pm, then we had some steady rain for about an hour, no idea how much, always sounds worse than it is on the tin roofs we have on our little houses here and again this morning it is overcast with a little wind right now, so staying at home again working on the web site. This again for me has not been a good month, but it falls in line with the rest of the year that has gone, real bad, one thing after another, although I must admit that this last one is my fault, I should not have gone back in that old drive, I was asking for trouble and I got it, the reason there was because of the hard ground, the miners here including me believe that when we hit hard ground of any kind there is a chance of finding opal near it, I have in the past an as there is potch in the wall in the drive next door on the right, and this drive was some twenty feet short of that one that I had a chance in there. So when I get the machine fixed I will go and do a drive to the right where I have marked the photo above, after that I don't know, I am now treading water until I get back from holidays as I explained above about registering pegs, so I cannot look for another claim right now, but I do need a change of ground, I need to get into a better type of ground for the machine, this claim of mine has now become expensive to work as I have never been able to get any decent footage per hour when not finding anything. I do have a couple or more short dives to do near the big shaft when I pull the machine back there before I pull it out and I do have a chance to find some small pockets of opal there and I will be doing one of these before I go on holidays, that is if I do not break the machine again after I fix it this time, it has been very disappointing this last three months, the time has gone real quick and I have done very little and not had any real big or expensive breakdowns, just wasted a lot of time more than anything. I had another oil leak come in the machine, I should say that it has been there for a long time, but came and went, but I have finally put my finger on it at last, as when the machine broke down again the oil was hot with the machine struggling to cut the hard ground and the oil leak was bad, so when I got the machine out of the drive I got down with rag and fund it, it turns out to be a pin hole in the weld on one of the hydraulic oil tanks from when the machine was built, should be easy to fix as it is not a pressurized tank, so will clean the spot with sandpaper next time down and seal it with my industrial silastic and see how that goes in the near future. 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. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here!

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