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 Post subject: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 5:18 am 
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Location: Gold Coast Australia
Hi guys,
I recently got back from up at our mine and made a little video to share. Hope you guys like it!



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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 7:07 pm 
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Location: Wylie Texas but in Alaska for a while
Thank yo for that. I know it was a lot of work, but this brings it home.

that is a lot of buckets to get out of there.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 10:45 pm 
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Location: Central Queensland, Australia
With that sapphire you can now buy a new wheelbarrow.

Joking :D I get the most out of my stuff as well, my shovels are all half-moon shaped at the front edge. If it still works, keep running it till it gives up the ghost I say. She's hard work alright. Is that you on the lighter hammer drill


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 11:10 pm 
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No that is Hooch on the jackhammer. I had plenty of time on it though. I am not actually in this video as I was shooting the footage. Instead I will be in one on my faceting machine as my main job is the cutting but I like to get my hands dirty too!


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 1:44 am 
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aussiejamie wrote:
No that is Hooch on the jackhammer. I had plenty of time on it though. I am not actually in this video as I was shooting the footage. Instead I will be in one on my faceting machine as my main job is the cutting but I like to get my hands dirty too!


Yep, that's me - I like being a "general practitioner". I love faceting and cabbing and am almost ready to take the next logical step into jewellery-making, but I couldn't live without my regular dose of fossicking. There's just something special about watching a rare piece of the earth's natural history roll out of the dirt, and knowing that you're the first person who has ever laid eyes on it.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:03 am 
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My god you are destroying the planet by digging up rock from one spot moving it to another and taking out the good stuff....you should be shot!! Only rains and gravity is allowed to do that!!

kidding aside...I hear the term "billy boulder" and with my limited Australian dictionary can you tell me is that a rock type or just river rounded boulders?


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 3:46 pm 
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Location: Central Queensland, Australia
stairman wrote:
My god you are destroying the planet by digging up rock from one spot moving it to another and taking out the good stuff....you should be shot!! Only rains and gravity is allowed to do that!!

kidding aside...I hear the term "billy boulder" and with my limited Australian dictionary can you tell me is that a rock type or just river rounded boulders?


I hope he hasn't injured any brigalow roots on the way down, the thoughtless beast! :)

Billy boulders are a feature of the Central Queensland sapphire field. I believe that are not found in Australia's other significant field in New South Wales. They are a very hard, quartzite boulder, often about the size of a basketball but can be much larger. They are scattered about the field in large numbers and their presence is taken as an indicator that sapphire may also be present - note I say may be :) They are plentiful enough so that you will see houses on the field made from billy boulders rather than bricks and are used as campfire rings in all the public areas. Our next door neighbour at our old claim years ago used to heat a few small billies in the fire, wrap them in hessian (burlap) and put them in his bed in the dead of winter to pre-heat it before retiring, just like a hot water bottle.

Their exact origin has long been argued over. They were officially called "stream-worn boulders" but I personally don't believe that's how they got their smooth, shiny appearance. The surface looks much more heat-glazed than water-worn to me. Some think they were a bed of sedimentary rock that was blasted into billions of fragments when the sapphire-bearing volcanoes burst through in that area and hurled about the place. Commercial miner Jim Elliot's observations seem consistent with what I have seen, though nobody is really certain.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:40 pm 
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Lefty has pretty much explained what the billy's are! Also that was a good read Lefty! We also backfill drives with overburden so we dont have to take that out of the mine and dumping up top creating extra work.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:58 pm 
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Yeah, Jim's argument makes a fair bit of sense to me and most people I have asked who have spent time on the field think it's probably about right.

I looked for photos of billy boulder cottages to post - the cabins at the Sapphire caravan park and the Gem Gallery at Rubyvale are both built out of billies - but I couldn't find any. I think a lot of my photos got shifted when I got the new computer.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 1:51 am 
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. Our next door neighbour at our old claim years ago used to heat a few small billies in the fire, wrap them in hessian (burlap) and put them in his bed in the dead of winter to pre-heat it before retiring, just like a hot water bottle.[/quote]

I've done that also camping in mid winter at a mine location in northern Nevada ,but be careful.I ruined a 300$ down sleeping bag because the rock was too hot! Luckily I only melted the nylon a bit but in the morning i just couldn't understand where all the white fluffy feathers were fly around camp were coming from until i got up and then tried to move the bag to roll up and a snow storn of goose down erupted. That ended that mining trip.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 7:35 pm 
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stairman wrote:
. Our next door neighbour at our old claim years ago used to heat a few small billies in the fire, wrap them in hessian (burlap) and put them in his bed in the dead of winter to pre-heat it before retiring, just like a hot water bottle.


I've done that also camping in mid winter at a mine location in northern Nevada ,but be careful.I ruined a 300$ down sleeping bag because the rock was too hot! Luckily I only melted the nylon a bit but in the morning i just couldn't understand where all the white fluffy feathers were fly around camp were coming from until i got up and then tried to move the bag to roll up and a snow storn of goose down erupted. That ended that mining trip.[/quote]

Yeah, you've gotta be careful with those sorts of things. One trick I've heard of for warming up a tent is to fill the camp oven with hot coals, wrap it in hessian and put it on the thick board in the tent, the radiant heat keeps the tent nice and toasty all night.

I've never tried it and probably never will - if anything went wrong you would end up nice and toasty yourself, crispy on the outside and cooked to perfection.


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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 11:57 am 
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Location: N Dakota
You guys live it up out there! Heated tents, beds! Wow, it's usually a tarp over a stick and sleep close to the fire. Burn up the socks drying out and sometimes the soles of the boots. Smell of burning rubber soles keeps the chipmunks away!

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 Post subject: Re: A little video of down our mine!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:59 pm 
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Location: Central Queensland, Australia
We have flies, you have chipmunks :) And having spent some time in North America I can say that chipmunks really are like flies in some places over there, swarms of them.

Good thing they don't get in your eyes and mouth and up your nose like flies, though they might steal your nuts. And these things...

Image

....do not work. If the corks were soaked in beer or wine, they just attract more flies. I haven't yet seen a hat with strips of flypaper hanging off it but that would probably work better. A beekeeper's type headnet is the only thing that works, with the added bonus that you can drink through it.

Almost no flies at this time of year thankfully.


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