The loaders and trucks normally stay underground in the mine: there even is a large underground workshop where maintenance and repairs on these are carried out. For some reason these two got to see the daylight today. When you imagine that the tires on the loader are about as tall as I am it can be quite scary when these trucks come flying at you on the steep and narrow underground roads

A rusted rod's inside... try and get the inner tube through this (the clearance is about 1-2 mm)

Drill rod Mikado... A large part of the rods that we were using appeared to be so rusted on the inside that the inner tube became stuck on its way up and down. This resulted in numerous wireline cable breaks (the fact that the cable had been rusting somewhere outside for the last 10 years did not help here) and once we drilled without the inner tube assembly in place. This means that you drill the core but that it does not go into the core tube but rumbles around in the corebarrel instead. Eventually, after replacing all the rusted rods, we succeeded in retreiving 8 of the 10 feet of this core.

Monday morning 06:30 in Pearisburg: an absolutely stunning sunrise seen from our hotel. Pearisburg lies in the middle of the Appalachian mountains and in fact the Appalachian trail (some 1500 miles long or more) passes right through it. Unfortunately I have not had the time yet to wander around a bit... maybe later today?

On the way to Pearisburg where we were drilling underground again last week I passed this monster... one thing is sure: no Dutch man has a mobile home like this... maybe it is ment that this is the size of a normal Dutch home....

My handywork: it'll hold... for a wile at least, as we found out that anything that can break will be broken by a driller sooner or later

Busy welding the mounts into place

This Saturday we worked on the frame for the LM 37 drill, making mounts for a hydraulic cylinder that is to adjust the drilling angle. Working with hydraulics reminds me a lot of playing with technic Lego.... you can build anything you want with it

Joey busy replacing the feed chains

Saturday and Sunday last week we spent in the workshop making one working LM37 drill from two pieces of LM37 junk that have been sitting outside for years and years. And yes, bolts and other parts tend to be rusted into place then... One big cheer for the penetrating oil and the anti-seize is definately justified here