John Cooper, Wayne Starsmore and Adrian Vanderplank. Took in John's Bosch drill as well as Adrian’s Hilti but the Bosch burnt out one of the bits so used the Hilti for most of the holes. Drilled 3 x 10mm x 400mm holes in “boulders” ahead and down and 2 x 10mm x 400mm holes behind to make working space. Used a plastic sheet over us to try and keep a bit drier - only partially successful. 3m of 40gm in holes and 3m 12gm connecting cord. A nice rumble was put down to the digging buckets being thrown about. 2 hours. John.
18/01/2018 John
Cooper, Wayne Starsmore, Myself. All down to the bottom. John drilled a
total of 5 holes ranging from 400mm to 200mm deep. Three in the
Southern end on the right and two in the Northern end to enlarge the working
area. Wayne and I
tried to keep the drips off John & the drill with a large plastic sheet I
had taken down but this was only partially successful. Once the holes
were drilled John & Wayne went to the top and I connected the cord and det.
John & I fired it from the step below the ledge. A loud five
second rumble was heard afterwards… but it didn’t sound like rock. Quite a lot
of pressure wave ensued from the bang and we think that one or both the digging
buckets got blown some distance up 4 tonne shaft before falling back down. By the time we
had reeled in the bang wire the fumes were at the bottom of 4 tonne shaft and
they followed us out. So why the large
pressure wave? Perhaps the rocks that we had drilled into were less solid than
we thought so a lot of the energy escaped but it seems like there was a lot
more draught than usual.
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| Sketch by Adrian Vanderplank. |