Opal Mining Newsletter June-30, 2007 on Mining Underground for Opals in Coober Pedy

June 30, 2007

Opal Mining Update - No 74

Not a Good Month and Finished on the 62 foot Level

Well here we are in another month already, in Australia this month of June is the end of the financial year for us, so if we have made a quid during the year we will have to pay some tax and if we haven't we may get some back and I am in the latter again, a few too many expensive's again and the truck topped it off, still never mind we may do better this coming financial year if we are lucky.

In this photo below I am starting to get into this drive now and I feel at this point that the shaft is on the right hand side of the original drive up, thee is no way I could have been this far out in my direction, but we will soon know as I have to do this drive anyway, as if you remember I did find a bit of material in the drive to the left so have to check out this side as well and as I said earlier, that when I got to the shaft and set up on it I would only be interested in tunneling to the left of it and this is the direction I would have gone so all is not lost.

Here the ground is changing again and is still very hard, that never seems to change in this area and again is slow going for me, no material as yet, but have about another 15 feet to go yet before I will finish this drive.

Where that piece of wood is in the next drive is 94 feet out and where the shaft should be if its there, but again I have gone at a very acute angle when I started this drive and am going to leave a large pillar again, as you can see I an just starting to make the pillar now and will be quite thick when I have finished doing the tunnel.

At last some material has come in the face on the right hand side, not on the level but below it where the arrows are, again did not expect it to come in here, but I should know that is this game anything is possible and not to expect anything.

Again it turns out to be plain old potch and there is the shape of a thin skin shell there as well, but this time this runs for about a foot or so before it peters out, who knows there may be a chance yet.

Again the ground is changing, has a mottle look to it, full of small pieces of Soap Stone and Alinite, some Gypsum and looking at the roof as I go forward looks like I am going through a fault in the ground, which I expected in this area, I also was hoping that the ground would change on the other side of this fault but so far nothing has changed in the hardness at all, I did strike this type of ground in the first drive that I came up from below with and went 108 feet out, I was just stating to cut the fault there also as the shaft was drilled 15 feet inside of this fault and 15 feet from the side fault so I have now cut both of them.

Just to show you that I had to put the elbow on as I said I would have too, now I know that I can move the machine around and do some tunneling in directions that I did not think about before, bit of messing a round but can be done as I have proved, a square tunnel machine is a lot easier to move around than a round one and quicker, but I get there and is a lot quicker and cheaper that blasting.

Well just about finished in this drive and no shaft, but already knew that, it should be to the left of that tripod, the first time I have brought that underground was last week so now will be able to take more photos of me doing stuff, anyway I have gone in the direction I wanted too and have found nothing but hard ground so this drive is finished and so I am I.

This is the drive as it looks without the machine in the way, I have gone under and through the fault and the ground is still hard, very hard so I have wasted enough money and time on this level and now will quit, will take all of the equipment back down tomorrow, then the machine last of all as I need the lights on it to see what I am doing up here, then I will break the machine down, will take that chain drive sprocket back out and check it again for wear which I feel it has got again already, if so it will have to be sent away to Adelaide to get fixed properly this time.

Here is the telescope that is from down below, it is the one that connects from the down pipes to the bottom elbow, as you can see it has rusted out in a big way, surprising how I never picked it up before this, I only noticed this hole last week, as there is a rubber sleeve that covers this section so it did a good job as this hole did not affect the vacuum that I needed.

Another angle of it, completely stuffed, so I have to get another made, will cut this ring and the handles off and then clean them up so they can be used again, that will save me a bit of money, problem is that Ross put bronze on around the ring area so that will take a lot of extra time in grinding and cleaning it all off as bronze does not grind off with the grinding wheel but rips and clogs the grinding disk.

Here is the ring cut off, now I have to clean it up have done a bit already but as I said the bronze is hard to get off, but getting there, I have already done the handles so they are ready to welded back on the new one, will have this ring done in about another 1/2 hour.

Here is the chain sprocket again, the groove is getting worn back in already do that quick fix I did was no good, so much for Liquid metal, not worth a pinch, so now will pack it up and send it to Adelaide to a company that sells these sprockets and also does machining and hardening, want to see if I can get it turned down and have a sleeve made up but have it hardened first so it will not wear like this again in the short term and then have it pressed on, but this weekend is a long weekend, so that will cost me a few days in time and Ross also will be going away for a week so will have to find something else to do for a while, like look around for another spot to peg a claim on for when I have finished with this claim I am on now, will not be easy finding another opal bearing claim without having to spend a lot of money on drilling etc and opening up again, don't really want to do that to soon, but may have to too.

Here is the new Telescope, ordered it last Friday the 8th and here it is today one week later, not bad as the guy is busy doing other jobs, cost $170.00 should last me a few more years, the trouble is that during the winter and some times during the summer months I get a lot of condensation that builds up in and on the outside of the hopper and then runs down the pipes and when it gets to the bottom it runs inside this rubber sleeve and as this sleeve has a clamp around it so the water must just sit there and overtime causes it to rust and I do not think about that first thing in the morning, but I have never had one rust out like this before, generally it just wears small holes in it and I patch it up a few times before having a new one made, this should last about 6 years or so I hope.

I was starting to look around this field for another spot to move to when I had finished with this claim, which was to be about right now as I do not want to mine in the damp or wet ground anymore, but it is not easy finding another spot that will produce opal unless one can spend some money of drilling quite a few shafts again and I do not have that type of money right now and all of the old places that have been worked over the years have been pillar bashed that much it is hard to get down them and have a look a round.

Not my old body anyway and when you can there is no longer any trace or potch in the walls as the pillar bashers have taken it out looking for some opal, so we have nothing to indicate to us that there a chance with the machine, same on the old Dumps I check the dumps for material (potch) gives me some idea what they have been on and found, some miners especially in the old days did not chase too far if they were on potch and it did not change to opal quick they would be put of there, today's its a bit different we prospect a bit more now, but the noodles have taken these dumps so thee is nothing to tell us now what went on underground with the old miners, was they on material or not, is the ground any good for opal or not, hard to tell now, so just keep on looking around.

And as I have to have a large shaft available to put the tunnel machine down and then it has to have the roof some 9 feet high as well, so to do this with an existing shaft already there would cost me around $1200, to drill a shaft and open it up to a big shaft and then open up around it so I can get the machine down and start tunneling would cost around $2000, so no matter what I do it is going to cost, so what I was hoping was that I could find a spot that has had a tunnel machine down and that has not done much work and that I may be able to go down and do some prospecting on the cheap.

But as it is now winter and a cold one for us this year, the wind cuts through the jacket in the morning when on the field looking around and it is too cold for me, so I have decided that I will carry on in my claim for a while longer, I want to try and take the machine up about two or two and half feet off the floor and do another couple of drives, maybe more if I find something as I think I may have a level in or just on the roof and then I have another drive that I went up with when I was first learning with this machine.

I did not complete this drive nor did I level it off on the 62 foot level and it is near the big shaft and not that far from my old claim, so I am thinking that I may go and finish that drive when I am finished where the pipes are now if I do not go on with the claim and do this before I pull the machine out, the ground may be softer down that end of the claim as it is some 170 feet from where I just finished the last drive up above, worth a shot and some opal was found in that area, so who knows.

I have just brought my fan into Ross's and looks like I am 3rd in line as mine is the one on the right hand side, but when I asked Ross if I could cut the new blades and get things ready he told me that he only had this one to finish as the one in the middle is not being done, it belongs to a friend of mine and they got it from another blower and has 24 blades it and there engine will not handle it, too much torque on it, I have the same trouble when I wanted to increase the revs on my engine, I couldn't because the fan controls it, in other words the fan is right on the limit in diameter for my engine to manage so if I was to make one with more blades for bigger vacuum my Perkins 6-354 would not be able to run it at the revs required to create the vacuum, just like my friend Frank.

Anyway Ross is just finishing this fan off then it has to be balanced, in the meantime I will get on with getting the steel and cutting the new blades as they are called.

Here I am cutting the metal, they are not like the original blades that are used when making the fan, but straight lengths of steel to patch up where it wears through, it is 2 inch wide and 1/4 inch thick and 7 inches long and there are 16 of them and will be welded in, I will tack weld them in place when I have finished cutting them up and then Ross will finished welding them in as I cannot use his Mig welder, never had the practice and he is out of normal welding rods or I would do it and then when he has finished I will put hard facing on them so they will last longer and be easier to repair the next time, then he can balance it that's his job needs experience that I don't have or want.

Ross messed me up, when I went in this morning to do the welding with the hard facing rods he had already balanced the fan, I had just paid $160.00 for this packet of rods not I do not have to use them for quite while, I will have to wait until I pull the other fan out which I will do before it gets worn right through, it has got some wear in it right now bit not enough to warrant pulling it out just yet, then I will weld it with the hard facing rods and that will save me having to put blades in like this and make the fan a bit lighter by a couple of kilos at least.

And as you can see the new radiator pipe is also done as soon as I get this chain sprocket back I will go an the filed and replace it and fill the radiator with water, the fan I will just put to one side here at home until I need it.

Thanks to Pat we are having an extension put on our veranda at the front of the house making it a car port to keep the vehicle and boat out of the whether, mainly the summer sun, which has already put 4 cracks in the windows on the boat and I got a stone chip on the way over to Western Australia this year and it gave me no problem until I got back here, 3 days in the sun and the window screen is now cracked from the bottom to the top and I have to replace it at a cost of $260.00 and we are not insured for that,

So I got the council to came and drill these 4 holes for me, where the 3x3 inch poles are going, my mate Peter who is next to me on the field is going to put it up for me at a cost of course, he is a builder by trade he has gone away right now to Coffin Bay where we was last year fishing and will be back in 2 weeks then he will work on this one day a week until it is done, be glad when it is finished, we need it.

Well not a lot this month due to me sending this part away and as of today that last day of the month I still do not have it back, been some hold up with it and a lot of promises, I had set it to one company to try and get a sleeve made up and hardened and then to have shrunk on, but when the guy who does the hardening looked at it he said that the sleeve which would only be about 1.5 mm thick (60 thousands of an inch) would buckle and probably fall off in the near future so could not be done.

This took a week from the time I had sent it, Thursday to Thursday, as it was along weekend in this country (again) so that was one week for nothing, then the boss at the factory asked me if I had thought about having it Hard Chromed and I said that was my second choice, after that the only choice was to have a new part made , so it was sent out to get the Hard Chroming done and this is where the hold up is, I recon that they did not get onto it for almost week, then they aid that they did not machine enough off the boss which is what we call the area that the seal runs on and where the groove wear was, then it was that they did not put enough chrome on, the last time I had this guy ring them which was on Thursday they said it was finished and that they could pick it up.

So the boss rang me and said that it would be on the bus that night and I would have it Friday morning, but when I went to the bus depot it was not there, so another phone call and this guy said he would ring them again to find out what had happened, turns out there had another job there being done, a ram, and it was this that was finished not mine, it turns out that mine came out of the tank with not enough chrome on it to make sure it cleaned up when they ground it back to finished size, so back in the chrome tank again for the 3rd time and now it is supposed to be ready for Monday the 2nd of July, so just will have to wait and see if it is or not.

As for the claim I was starting to look for another spot, but the cold weather got to me first thing in the morning, so gave it away, now as I have brought the machine and all of the equipment back down to the bottom level I have decided (again) that I will do some more mining on that level, I see that I may have a level on the roof if not just above it in some places that I have been, I am going to try going up about 2.5 feet and try to redo some drives that I have already done, this may require me to blast the side wall in on one drive so I can get enough dirt on the floor for small ramp to get the machine up that extra 2 and a half feet to start off with.

I am still going to try and reach the 2 shafts that I cut material in and have not reached as yet due to the wet ground, but by going up two and a half feet I will be in dry ground up top and damp below so this will help to slow down the blocking of the elbows etc, will give it try anyway for the next few months.

So as you can see I have plenty to keep me busy, along with working on this newsletter this one would have taken me about 6 hours or so to put together and then I work on the web site putting new items in and I have also just finished designing a new page look for the web sit, I decided it need a face lift, just like I gave this newsletter one, some time back, so as I said I am always busy I do spend a lot of hours every day on 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.

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