Mystic but especially wet experiences during drilling

"Heeee... there is no reception here!"

Origami special: cardboard core boxes that need to be folded into being. Joey demonstrates our newfound hobby and his flash saftey glasses

Joey practicing the miner pose

Our new playground in the mine

The entrance from the inside: home of 16 goats (couple of which are in the picture). At first there were only 2 but these must have pursued the West Virginia way of family planning

Mine entrance straight into the limestone seam.

The site is about an hour NE of Wytheville and is an underground limestone (kalksteen) mine. Limestone is mainly used as raw material for the production of cement. We will be working on 13th level at about 250m depth. The tunnes are really big, about 6m high x 12m wide, and instead of a shaft with a hoist there is a spiralling access ramp that you can drive down, even with a fair sized truck.

It was much more difficult to get it off with two of these.....

With two forklifts it was quite easy to load the rig onto a trailer

Welder-look

To provide a bit extra friction between the anchor and the rock in the hole beads had to be welded onto the rods. As I was learning to use the electric stick welder I got inspired to do a bit of text writing.... for the less litterate it reads 'aap noot las'

On Monday we made the last preparations for the underground drilling job of the coming weeks. I welded these makeshift rockbolts together from old drillrods, they will be glued into holes drilled in the tunnel walls as anchors to tie the rig down to.

Could not leave these sitting on the shelf in the shop, could I?

On the road back to Wytheville I reckoned I'd gotten enough fresh air for the day

And we just have enough time for a Ford/Boart Longyear commercial

Finally found my way to the top of Whitetop mountain: the view was worth it!

And we even got out!

After hiking through valleys for three hours I decided to try and drive to the mountain top... 6 med-students on spring break liked that idea and came along for the ride... came in very handy when I got stuck here (dig, guys!)

....but outside the park its OK

The Solution

After taking a little shortcut (did'nt want to walk the full 2000 miles in one day) I ended up at this creek.... had to cross it. Where is your chainsaw when you need it?!

Sunday I had a day off (!) and I took the opportunity to do a bit of hiking in the Appalachian mountains near the highest point of Virginia (about 1500m) 1 hour SW of Wytheville. After a while I found a trail that I believed to be part of the Appalachian trail, a route stretching roughly 2/3 of the US from North to South. On second thought (and after hiking for 3 hours) it appeared to be the Virginian Horse Trail... ah well...

Saturday I worked at the (work)shop to get the rig ready that I'll be drilling with the coming weeks. It was used in a zinc mine where salt water was abundant and has since been sitting outside on the yard.... In other words: there is some work to it....

On Thursday the rods got stuck because the grease we had put on them (common method to reduce rod vibrations) got to be like chewing gum when it came into contact with cold water and coal cuttings. After going shopping at the office in Wytheville for a solution and materials we pumped a bathtub or 3 full of soapy water down the hole to get rid of the grease.

Thursday morning aout 8 deer crossed our path, not shy at all they came within 15m of the car (where is that gun when you need it...)

Wednesday the used bit we put on the previous day was completety worn.... so we gat all the rods back out to replace it...

With such a sunrise even War is pretty

And John drilling again

Greg reading the paper beside the stove

Of course you need to get the 40 rods out of the hole again to get to the bit...

On tuesday we bunt a diamond bit. This is what it looks like when it does not get water for a couple of seconds while drilling: almost all diamonds gone.

Despite the motto 'No crack on the job!' there is some moonshine out of John's jeans

It appeared that we needed to log the core as well, so we had to go back and assess the core again. Logging means as much as noting the depth of the rock types encountered in the hole.

View of the workfloor

After John got back to War on monday we first had to establish the real hole depth (Greg and I messed up a little here...). Best way to do it is to get all the rods out and count them. To save time you leave three rods screwed together and have someone unscrew the hoisting plug in the crowsnest, me in this case.

USA training: week 3

The third week I spent in War again, back to the middle of nowhere. This week the progress was somewhat less compared to the week before as lots of things went wrong...