July 31, 2007 Opal Mining Update - No 75 Started New Drive, found a Bit of Color and yet Another Breakdown

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Monday 2nd. Still waiting for the chain sprocket to come back from Adelaide, had a call this afternoon to tell me that it is at last finished at this Chroming place and ready for them to pick it up and may get on the bus tonight, the guy will give me a call if its makes the bus in time for me to get in in the morning, but I never got the call so it did not make it. Tuesday 3rd. Got the call this morning that they did not have time to take the sprocket into town to put it on the bus for me yesterday but will be on it today for me to pick up in the morning, so at last it will not be long before I am back into it, have to do a few small repairs first, like putting that new radiator pipe back on and fill the radiator with water (about 24 liters) have to clean where the sprocket came out of, before I can put it back in and along with the chain. Then I have some of the plastic pipes to fix where the dirt has started to lift then around where the metal sleeves are, have to take them off and cut the damaged ends off with a saw and then put them back on and drill more holes so I can put more bolts in to try and stop it happing again, then put the new telescope back in and tie it up and reconnect the rope pulleys, 15 minute job, also have to put one of my side plates back on the machine that is not a big job either. I had a phone call this afternoon around 1:40pm from Pats workplace the Mud Hut Motel, that she was having another bad turn and that they had taken her to the hospital, so I was off like a shot to see her, when I got there pat  was just being wheeled in the room in a wheel chair that they went and got from inside the hospital entrance so I was right behind her, she was in a bad way again, white as a sheet, her arms were shaking a little and sweating and clammy again and the worst is of course she has trouble gets her breath, looks real bad when you are watching I can tell you. They put all the leads back on her and I got out of the room for while, while they did there job, but she recovered again after about 1/2 hour and said that she could come home in around 1 and a half to 2 hours time so I came back home and carried on at the computer, but the hospital never rang me to come and get here when the time was up so I rang them and they said that they were keeping Pat in to take another blood test at 7:30pm, so I went up at that time and waited for her and we got home at 8pm. She is back to normal now and will be having the day off tomorrow to have rest and then back to work on Thursday morning. Thursday 5th. Pat is back at work and back to normal again, she is as hard as nails this old girl, she said she will not let it get her down, but she is worried about it of course, they cannot do much for her they say as it has not happened enough for her to have a pace maker put in yet and when they take the tests they find nothing wrong, funny she went down to Adelaide last week and saw the Heart Specialist on the 28th of June and she took 2 tests, one was the tread mill that she had to walk on at a fast sped and she did 10 minutes on it. The Specialist recons she did brilliant and her heart is like 35 year olds, but said that she baffles him a he cannot find out what is wrong with her, I suppose it like a lot of things that can go wrong with the body, you have to be there at the time so the specialist can see what is happening on his machines not the ones up here, but what is the chance of that, so far she has had 1 month now for the last 3 months, just hope she does not have any more in the short term and I do not have to write about it to you.

At last the chain sprocket is back, was supposed to take 2 to 3 days being Hard Chromed and then ground back to the finished size of 130mm, but took 3 weeks they had to put it back in the chrome tank 2 more times after they had done it the first time, I think they had made a mistake in the machine and had to do it again, but that is only a guess as I will never know, the company I sent it to had to send it out to another company to get this chroming done so it was not there fault, anyway it is done and a good job. Now it will last for a long time, not that the seal wont wear out from time to time with all of the dust that it has to put up with, but it should not get any wear groove it now, this is the same surface that is on the Hydralic Rams, so made to last.

Here it is back in place, now I have to run the chain round and reconnect it together, then take the tension up with the small adjustable sprocket on the bottom and put the cover back on and it will be finished.

Front cover on and sealed so I will have no oil leeks, I have put a new oil seal in the plate, so now to put the cutting plate on when I have changed over the teeth and I will be ready for action as soon as I have done a few more small jobs tat have been waiting to get done first.

I will be borrowing my friend Boro's small welder as I want to try and weld another cutting tooth on the floor cutter so I can try and stop this wide lump of sandstone/alinite forming when it gets really hard, the other side of the machine cuts it half this width, I must have missed putting a tooth on when I did the modification at the beginning, so now is the time to fix it.

Well I did miss putting tooth on in this position, it looks like there was another 2 teeth here and a past owner has cut them off, I added another 12 new teeth when I did this up but as I said I missed putting one here, so I am going to weld one on that I had laying around at home, should be long enough for the job.

And here it is on and finished, could have been another 1\2 inch longer, but  should do the job quite nicely and will make a difference even if it is a bit short, but will not know until I get into hard ground again on the floor, hope I never find out as I don't want hard ground again.

Here I am putting the new telescope back in its place, should last me a few years before I have to do it again, in fact my mining career may be over before this needs to be replaced, the old body is cracking up so this telescope may outlast me.

Now to start repairing some pipes, turns out that I have 4 that need to be repaired, (where the arrows are) but all will have to have 6 extra bolts put in them to strengthen them up at the ends so they do not lift like this again, this is caused when I go round a corner or a slight bend and the pipes are not laid in a straight line, but at a slight angle to each other and the dirt hits it on the edge of the plastic pipe and starts to get between it and the steel female coupling and lifts it, from there it only gets worse.

First I have to remove the rubber sleeve, ( 2 seconds ) then I have to remove the old bolts, I start by grinding the nuts off and then knock the blots out, take the coupling off and I am ready to remove the bad end of the pipe.

Then with an ordinary wood saw, I saw the bad end off, I had marked it with the saw close to the edge of the coupling before I took it off so I would saw it in a  straight line, then after this has been removed I clean the sharp out side edge up with the grinder and put the metal end back on, then drill holes in the plastic pipe through the 3 original holes and fit new bolts then I have to mark where the new holes will go and then drill and fit the bolts all 6 of them, so there is now one about every 3 and a half inches all the way round.

Here is number one finished, gave me some grief as well, for the life of me I could not get the end back on after I had cut the bad piece off and had ground the edge so it would go on easily, even put grease on it, but no amount of banging with the hammer would do it, so after about 20 useless minutes I thought I would try the other end, Duh, and it went straight on, go figger so now I will try and do one every working day until they are finished and hope they last, still I have been using them for about 9 or 10 years and have only every had to repair 2 in that time before.

I put the new rope down the shaft, had  trouble there as well, could not get the old one up as it was caught around one of the clamps on the pipes down the shaft, took me a good while to get it off and when I did and got it up, I had forgot that I had spliced an eye in the old one, so I had to splice this one as well, this is the best way to make the rope last as it is connected to a wire rope and tying it straight onto that would have not lasted long before it would have cut through, so with a cold wind blowing as this is as I got to work first thing in the morning so it would have been around 9:30am and the eyes were watering, I did not do a bad job as it turned out. Cannot remember how I came to learn to do splicing as it was a very long time ago, but I used to work on an Oil Rig in about late 1971 for a few months, was 90 miles North West of Dampier in Western Australia, drilling in 600 feet of water and I ended up doing all of there splicing of the wire rope they used, up to 1 inch in diameter I could do by myself, over that it took 2 men to handle it, done a few things in my time or as they say here, "been there and done that".

Here I am about to start the new drive, I will be going up around 2.5 feet as I feel there is another level in the roof or at least that is what it looks like and the only way to find out is to do a drive, so I have to knock a bit out of the roof again so the cutting head can start rotating.

I am on my way at last, you can see where I have marked with the arrows, this looks like a level to me and although I was going to quit this claim because of the wet and damp ground, I have decided to have another go and see if I have missed a level above and I will make another attempt to reach the 2 shafts that I have not been able to because of the wet ground, I have another plan of attack. I must reach these 2 shafts and have a look around them as they both contain material in the level, one I have been down and that is the one that the drive behind the machine that is going up to the level above and the one I have just come down from, I will after this next drive be going under this drive and heading for the shaft again, but we will see what happens in this one first.

Well you can see there is a level straight away in the roof or higher than the last level I was on anyway, in the drive next door I hit potch near the end of the drive on the right hand side and it was 2.5 feet long, so we will see what I get in this drive when I reach that distance, it was this that got me thinking about another level a bit higher and it looks like I am right, so on we go.

Digging out a bit of potch that came into the level, but it was "Houdini Potch" now you see and now you don't, no sooner hit it with the pick and it was gone so we carry on tunneling and hope for better and more of it, you can also see that the top 1/3 of the drive is full of Alinite and so is the floor and I am happy to say that the extra tooth I put on its working like a dream, I do not have the problem any more leaving that wide section and the front of the crusher box is breaking off what is left on the floor, got in hard ground sooner than I would have expected, but at least now I know, but the cutting is slow due to this Alinite.

Still going up and about ready to start leveling off the machine, you can see the level now, there are 2 lines that can produce material.

As you can see I am not that far into the drive as yet only 8 foot and this is the end of day one, still a lot of work to do in leveling off the machine and changing pipes and I will have to add the other elbow as well as I am not on a straight line from the down pipes.

Day 2 and I have struck another bit of potch, there are 2 definite levels here, weird ground, but the ground above these levels is a bit drier.

Have to dig it out as I never know what is in there behind this little bit, but was more "Houdini Potch",  ground is pretty good so far, looks like I may not get blocked as quick as I did before, will keep the fingers crossed.

When I went to change a pipe I noticed that the back of the crushed box, that is the part that I clamp the flexible pipe to was sitting on the ground, have no idea how long it had been like that, only came to my attention as I was attempting the level the machine off and as the rear came up off the ground this stayed behind, it is not that far off when everything is alright. Turns out that a bracket has lost a bolt and I have jack up the box so I can get it back on again, lucky I carry a few bolts underground and I have one that will do the job perfectly, so what I done is to lift it up with a length of timber and slide small pieces of timer under that one, keeping the box off the ground, worked out well.

The bracket is where the arrows are and the bolt hole is marked, but I had a lot of trouble trying to get the holes to line up and there is a hydraulic oil line very close to it an I could not get the bracket in far enough to line the 2 holes up so I could get the bolt in, as I could not get both arms in at the same time that made it more difficult, so after about 15 or 20 minutes, I realized that no way would they line up so something was wrong as it had a bolt I so how did they get it in. It was then I cleaned off the end a bit more and found that there was another hole there that was blocked with dirt, never thought to look for another when you have one on the end, once I had found that and had cleaned off the dirt I had no problem in lining up the 2 holes and putting the bolt in, I had turned off the blower to save fuel as I was taking so long with this, thought I would check the bolt on the other side and found that it also was loose, so tightened that up as well, now it will be alright now for a while. It is with all of the vibration on the machine when I am cutting hard ground that brings these undone, but I also found another problem when I was tightening up this bolt on the other side, I found that I have 3 small holes in a corner on the crushed box that will have to be patched up ASAP, to do a proper job on it I would need the machine up top and on the trailer, so I could bronze a metal patch on it, but will  try and get away with a rubber one as soon as I have finished this drive and get the machine back in some open space.

Here you can see how I have gone up about 18 inches at the moment but will have to level it off more yet as I am still going up at an angle, so I will end up about 2 foot higher than I was doing the other drives you can see.

Here I have struck a small piece of potch in face on left hand side, was gone as soon as I picked at it, you can see now thee are a few lines in the face of which any of then could produce at any time, I live in hope.

Start of day 3, not done to god the last couple of days in footage with the starting of the drive and having to level the machine off which takes time, if you look at the roof you can see how I have brought the machine down and I still have to bring the cutting head down more yet to get it level, but there are too many ironstone lines and I have to try and carry them all in the face, so I have to try and keep the top line in view.

Here I have brought the machine back and now slowly cutting my way back to the face and I will have to do it again after I have done this, you can just see the pieces of wood under the rear of the tracks, that I use to back the machine on, but they are not lifting the rear height enough to bring the head down, what happens is that the dirt under the back of the tracks is too soft and the timber sinks into it, thus not giving me enough lift, will try something else with the next try.

Here I have put 3 inch square blocks under and then another piece of wood at the rear of that to keep the 3 inch block from sinking in the soft ground and it is working quite well at the moment, you can just see how the rear of the machine is well into the air by looking at the flexible pipe, how it is compared to the black plastic pipe, this angle will again change when I cut my way back to the face, but the cutting head will have come down by about 9 inches, so this time it will do me as I will be where I want to be for a while.

Here you can see there is 5 ironstone lines coming in from the right and falling away to the left and I have got some colored trace just come in the face where the arrow is, so now to have a pick at it and see what we can get out of it.

Here is a close up of the trace, nothing much and about 1/8 inch in thickness, some green and some other colors that I did not see until I processed this photo at home, as this trace is still in a bag underground, not a lot came out of it, no pocket as I was hoping for, but still encouraging, never know what is in front of me, we will keep going.

And the ground has changed again as you can see, this is what the face looks like at the end of day 3, alinite has come in again and a hint of potch just under the alinite on the left hand side, so we will see what tomorrow brings, I like the look of this face and the ground is still quite good, does not look like causing any blockages at the moment for which I am very pleased.

Day 4 and that potch again turned out to be nothing did not even come in the level what I saw was it, but I have come across a shot hole from an old claim next door, did not do much in opening up by the look of the dump on top and I am just going past the end of what may have been a drive or they just opened up a little around the shaft by the look of it which was a hand dug square shaft, so they would have worked hard for nothing, would be good to see some opal come in the face now, then you could see how a miner can miss opal by stopping short.

Nothing so far, no trace no potch or anything as yet, but this shot hole is now in plain view and is what we call a "Bull Hole" that is where a charge as gone off and not brought the whole dirt from the back of the drill hole out, this is caused by not placing the charges close enough together and the bomb has too much to do or most likely in this case is that it is wet ground again they should have put the charges closer together and maybe not as deep as they did maybe 6 inches short, all the bull holes I have seen all like this and are about 12 inches deep. I myself have had some in the past in this wet ground so we all have done it and some still do it like this today, the miner that I started with when I came here did this on every shot hole until I taught him how to mix the AMFO properly and he had been mining for more than 25 years, was mixing it too wet and it was not going off properly and this will also cause Bull Holes, so this may have been the reason as well forgot about that one, still not my problem anymore.

Look at that face, lines everywhere, drives me nuts not know what is what and what to look at, so now have to keep an eye and all, that large brown patch on the left hand side in the top corner is some sort of fault that I am going behind and traveling parallel with right now, this could be good or bad, will only know when I have finished the drive.

This is the end of day 4 and the ground is starting to get a bit wet, so I thought I would come back and have a look down the other drive to see how far I am from reaching the same distance and it looks like I still have fair way to go yet and I have to go as far as the end of this old drive if not 10 foot further as there is 2 foot - 6 inches of potch about 1/4 inch thick where the arrow is in the old drive next door and where the arrow is in this drive is where the level is, so you can see it is just about inline, maybe falling away to the left a touch, but not much.

I am extending the veranda on our poor old house to act as a carport, to keep the vehicles and boat out of the sun, particular the 4x4 as we cannot afford to get another bank loan anytime soon to get another, so better start protecting all of them now and also some added value to the old house, this is 2 and half days work so far being done by a friend of mine Peter who is mining next to me on the opal field, he is a builder, but this is not a love job I am paying by the hour for his skills, which is to be expected to big a job to do for nothing, we were going to put the roof iron on today Wednesday the 25th, but the wind was up early this morning and only got stronger so it has been put off until Saturday or after that when there is no wind. Then when this is finished as it will take 3 of us the get the roofing iron up and Peter to Teck Bolt it in place I will over the next couple of weeks put a wooden frame up with shade cloth on it to stop the morning and afternoon sun for coming is sideways, will look good when it is finished, next year I have to do some work on the rear of the house when the money is available. Also forgot to tell you that the front end loader is broke down, after I had moved some of the dump on day 3 and I went to put some water in the radiator so I could move some more dirt after I had finished mining but the water just pored straight through, so what ever was wrong with it before had got worse and now had to be fixed, no more putting it off and as it is a big job, to big for me I will have to get another friend of mine Dave the mechanic to do it for me, you have seen him before in earlier photos when I did the starter motor on the blower etc, he is a bit fitter than me, so he has pulled the radiator out of an old loader he has and I have had it checked and it is alright, but my water pump was also leaking so he is now fixing that, should be back in action next week I hope or I will not be able to mine as the dump will be up.

Day 5, first I forgot the camera so that was an omen for sure and I had to stop after about 3/4 of an hour and clean out the bottom elbows as they were too blocked to keep working, the top one was not that bad and had dried out over the days I have been off so all I had to do was just picked it out, but not the bottom, anyway after that when I started working again, I came across a bit of potch shin shell right in the middle of the face and next to the roof so that meant that there was another level above and I had already started the machine to go down so I could bring this level in front of me up above the cutting head. So I brought the machine back a couple of feet and put a piece of timber under each track so the machine would start going up at an angle again, works well, have to do a bit of jackpicking the help the cutting head get started as it bites into the roof but after that it is easy going and slow because of the wet ground again, anyway had not gone far when this level comes into view and is carrying potch all the way along it, mind you I can only see about 6 inches of the level at this point still have to go up more and then I hit a small bit of color in the wall, so time to stop and have a bit of a dig, just love color.

Lucky for me it turns out that this shell was standing upright and facing end on to me and I had just nicked the end of it, the end you can see on the left and it looks like green blue in color, these 2 photos are as I have dug it out of the face, I have to clean it to have a good look at what I have found.

As I was digging out the shell above there was more bits of shell that came into view so I just dug them out and put them in the tin that I use while I am tunneling and empty it into my bag as it gets full or when I finish for the day, in this case I did not know I had 2 until I have tumbled what I had brought home, it was mostly bits of potch that I dig out as I go along with some small pieces of green and green/orange and so it builds up in the bag till I get enough to tumble or like today I get a bit of color, so I now have 2 so looks like I made a bit of expense money to today for change, there may be a good parcel in front of me, well I can hope anyway.

And here is a look at the ends to see some of the color showing, I will over the next couple of days get in the cutting room and clean them up[ properly and then I will take another photo  for you to see, looks like the big one on the right has natural cracks in it or I should say that it is in pieces that are still joined together, I will clean them so they still have there natural shape and some lines if possible, good that the buyer can see how they look as I find them, no bull here, what you see is what you get, straight from Mother Nature as she makes them and me the opal miner who is always trying to sniff them out, with some degree of difficulty I can tell you and lot of expense, but I love it.

As I was saying about the front end loader, that what we call them over here anyway, it has the radiator out and now the water pump as well, I told Dave the Mechanic, that it looked like it was leaking or had been, so he went out and checked and not wanting to take any chances he pulled it off and brought it home, he is going to replace it with the one off his old loader  that he keeps for spare parts lucky for me, so it will be back in action early next week, this is such a big job to get the radiator out it is not worth taking any chances with anything that may look like it will gave any problems in the near future, very hard to get too and have to remove most of the front of the machine to get to it including taking the exhaust pipe off which is near the battery and you can see where that sits. This is one piece of equipment that I can not work at mining without, especially now I have a tunnel machine, in the old days of hand mining I could move the blower around the shaft about 3 times and put a dump up, then I would have to get someone with a loader to came and move the dumps for me if I was not ready to move away from that shaft and I have waited for a week for a loader to come, but no more, now when things go right and I can do some tunneling I have a dump up in week so I need this to move my own dirt as I stay on a shaft for a long time, up to one year or more in this wet ground, would be a lot shorter in dry ground as I would tunnel a lot quicker.

Friday the 27th, Sun was shining, wind was low and went to work with a smile on my face and was wondering what I may find in front of me today, finding a bit of color will do that to you, really get the juices flowing and make you eager to get to work the next day and get down  and dirty, then when you get there something jumps up and smacks you right in the face and brings you back to the real work again, like below, I started the blower and heard a noise for the fan area and also saw some water running off the engine block, when I looked up I saw that one of the core plugs in the engine block as a pin hole in it, so that was the end of this days work. So I punched a hole it with a screwdriver to let the water out, after covering up the controls again as I do every time I shut down, then I got the plug out which has only been in there 15 months, I put this one in when I repaired the radiator last April, so it did not last long, now I have a brass one that will be going in, then I took off the inspection cover on the fan housing and checked the fan, turns out it has come loose on the shaft, so that is the end of that. Now I have to get friend to come out and help me get the fan out, its the big 12 pipe that is attached to the fan housing that I have trouble with, it takes two to lift it off and put it back on again, used to do it all by myself, but the old body will not do it anymore, now I have to wait and see if there is any damage to the shaft or the keyway in the shaft, if thee is then it is a big breakdown again for me as it takes time and a lot of effort to get the shaft out of the bearings, so I will not know the worst until next week now, always seems to be the same find some opal and the Gremlins get upset, makes you wonder don't it, about all of the relatives of Jack Schitt, think I have upset most of them for sure, used to say that maybe I had run over a China Man and killed him, but have not dealt with any of them for more than 4 years now, so its not that for sure, yep its the Jack Schitt Family for sure.

So we I came home and got showered and changed, made a cuppa said a small prayer about mining with some well chosen words and decided that it was time to give the old computer a birthday, she was a bit noisy and Pat has been complaining about it and I keep telling her that it is the fans inside that are noisy, but it was time to blow the dust out of the old girl and she was full of our beautiful Coober Pedy Dust, as you can see, so I thought I would put this photo in for all of you .3computer buffs that maybe don't think about giving your computer a clean out now and again, I do it about every 6 months if I remember, looks like this went over that time. Tomorrow my mate Peter is coming back if the wind is down to put the roofing iron on the car port and then he will be finished and I can pay him then over the next couple of weeks I will put some shade cloth on the side to keep the morning and most important the afternoon sun out, this I can do by myself, should look good when it is finished, Ahhhh the lot of an opal miner is not an easy one nor is it for his wife either.

Peter did come with his offsider also Peter and they started to put the roofing iron on and finished the job as far as they could as he was one sheet short, so went and got that when he had finished for the day and came back the next morning, this morning and finished the job off completely, nice job and now we have shade from the summer sun, I even thought I saw the boat smile as we pushed it under the car port. I also went out to the field this morning with another friend of mine called Dave, I have a few by that name, we pulled the fan out and changed it over with the repaired one, I also put the core plug in the engine block and filled it with water, so that is done, now I have to undo 4 big bolts and put some shims in and this to tighten the belts that drive the fan, they have stretched and now need to be re-tightened up, so that is the first job tomorrow morning. The loader has the water pump and radiator back in it but the job has not been finished off as yet, Dave the mechanic has to go back out and just put a few things back in place and then that also will be finished, hopefully will last me a few more years, I am very surprised at the amount of wear that is in this new fan as it has not done a lot of footage at all, 180 feet in all I have just found out, so that shows you just how hard the ground was on the level above, too hard for me and the equipment and too costly by far. So tomorrow it is back to work again and for how long I have no idea, I would like a decent run before I have another breakdown and I would love to find some much need opal, takes money this game and the web site only can provide that for so long our dollar has shot up something fierce and the cost of fuel, well I do not have to  tell you about that as it affects all of us, just we use more than the average person and I am only a small miner that does not work a lot of hours with the machine. So until the next update, I wish you all the best, I will try and put the shells up for sale next week, just at the moment I am changing the web sits look as some of you may have noticed, it all started with changing the look of this newsletter and I am about to put a new up to date shopping cart or I should say the backend engine that handles all of the sales etc and I have to manually change over the data base information on items and past customers, so I do a bit every day on that, plus doing the wire wrapping pages that I am working on right now, then I will have to get some new items of jewelry to put on the web site and of course I have to do some mining, so I do not have a lot spare time away from this computer. 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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