swizzle
Sr. Member
- Thread starter
- #21
I went back and reread the thread because I completely missed the crystal part.
Crystals.
Digging straight down into the hill.
How are you drilling a bunch of deep 3/4 to 1-1/4" holes and splitting out a 2x2x3' block straight down and not breaking crystals with the drill?
How do you get the block out?
Are the crystals in a seam that you're trying to get to so you're just removing overburden or are they random pockets?
I'm missing something.
- Wedges, 20' 1/2" rebar. Grind in wedge on 2 sides then cut off length. Bonus point for making a Gingery forge and pounding to shape.
- Natural forces, frozen water. Drill holes, drop in slice of dry ice, fill with water.
- Capping method to remove smaller chunks with shallower holes. This is if you are sneaking up on random pockets. Much like this micro-blaster video
Keeping in mind that microblaster charge is like 2" long. Even the ball busting shot was 2 caps. That in the cave boulder shot was only 1 cap.
The crystals are in pockets and on occasion there is no choice, your gonna drill through a few crystals. Sometimes as your drilling you'll drill right into a pocket that has some more room and you'll feel the drill drop a little and hopefully not to the bottom of the pocket through a crystal. The pockets tend to run close together, around 3ft a part but you do find an occasional random pocket. To get the blocks out I needed to get a hole chipped out mostly with hand tools to where I hit a sand seam. I currently have a 2 1/2' to 3' thick section of wall that I can pop pieces off of. So far its been random chunks where ever the seams allow splitting but as I go deeper the seams will disappear and the rock will get even harder. The bonus is no seams = easier pin n feather work because the seams wont stop the cracks from traveling from one set to the next. I am also finding random pockets in the seams as well. With the pockets being so close together but in a pattern I can try to drill around them and hope to just open them by breaking the seam apart. This upper layer is giving me some nice crystals but its also giving me a lot of tight packed crystals that contact the ceiling, floor and walls of the pocket. The bigger deeper pockets can be up to the size of a 55 gallon drum and the chances of drilling through crystals in those pockets is almost non existent. Not sure how 3/4" rebar will hold up when I'm busting 3/4" and 1" mason chisels. I did get a hold of some leaf springs and plan on making some spring steel wedges. Only problem I have now is how to sharpen them without losing their temper. My 3/4" pin n feathers have only been used a few times but I'm already bending the crap outta the feathers. I think I really need to upgrade everything to break the rock a little easier. Bigger drill, bigger bit, bigger sets. The spring steel wedges will be for getting into the cracks and seams and with enough wedges I could pop up and loosen larger chunks of rock and make breaking them up a lot easier. I'm only leasing the claim so I need to follow the rules of the mine which states no explosives of any kind.