Beaus Ruby Visit ReCap
Wednesday, 11/06/13 04:56:48 AM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
Good morning NBRI. After 6 hrs of flying and 9 hrs of driving I'm finally in grass valley about 4 blocks from the office. Time to get some sleep before the mine tour. Go NBRI.
Wednesday, 11/06/13 01:47:22 PM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
Update. Just spent 2 hrs having a great conversation with the geologist Gary Clifton. Heading out to the mine right now.
Wednesday, 11/06/13 06:57:51 PM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49119
Post # of 49483
Hello NBRI. Spanky, red carpet is an understatement. The whole crew and staff were absolutely wonderful. I spent the whole day with Gary Clifton. Went into the mine with him and charley Johnson, the head miner. Got all the way back to the old black channel raise. Also the white channel raise and the 109 raise. The work they have done is phenomenal.
Wednesday, 11/06/13 07:01:45 PM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
I am still in the mountains with limited phone access. Will update when I have better service.
Thursday, 11/07/13 04:43:36 PM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49234
Post # of 49483
I have all kinds of info that I will be passing on when I wind down my trip. The gold samples that were found in the white channel were found by Gary Clifton. He and charley climbed up the ladder you see in the pictures and crawled around with small hammers and picks and sifted through some gravel. You can't really stand up in the white channel so they crawled around. Once they get the raise bigger and get equipment up there they can start running material.
Thursday, 11/07/13 04:47:14 PM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49234
Post # of 49483
The question I have for the board is this. After spending all day with Gary and charley and looking at maps, all of which are on the website so nothing new, I have a complete understanding of how they Ruby will work. How detailed do you guys want me to be?
Friday, 11/08/13 01:38:43 AM
Re: goodfree post# 49252
Post # of 49483
one of the things I learned from Gary was that when they build tunnels like that they always pitch the tunnels at least 1 degree towards the entrance. That does 2 things, it allows for a continuos flow of water out of the mine and when the ore carts are full and heavy there is a slight downhill pull on the carts that assist the carts to go out of the mine.
Friday, 11/08/13 09:33:52 AM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49256
Post # of 49483
How they work a channel, you read that they need to widen the raise for the white channel and bring in some equipment. If you look at my photobox pictures you will see a picture of what I am calling a bucket puller, there is another name for it but I can't remember what it is. But what that does is has cables attached to it and levers that you push and pull and the cables pull and push a bucket back and forth. it is attached to the back wall at the end of the channel and the bucket pulls material towards you and into and down the raise where the ore carts are waiting. Each time they blast they will move the cables further to the back of the wall they just blasted and pull more material towards the raise and drop it down into the ore carts. I know this may not make sense but that is the equipment they are referring to that needs to be taken in there
Friday, 11/08/13 09:39:33 AM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49256
Post # of 49483
White channel gold, take a look at the picture on the website with the gold sitting on the scale. Read what the caption says, it says this is first gold found NEAR the black channel. It really doesn't matter where it was found, there is a lot of it in there.
Friday, 11/08/13 09:47:51 AM
Re: Spanky227 post# 49274
Post # of 49483
For the most part there will be none, it is all gold bearing gravel, once they get the raise opened up and the chutes repaired any gravel in the channel could be sampled. there isn't a lot of room to stand so there will be some manual labor to get it open enough to get the equipment in. Cave ins in tunnels are different then cave ins from a channel. Channel cave ins will be material that can be processed since it is in the channel gravel, tunnel caveins aren't good for obvious reasons.
Friday, 11/08/13 10:19:07 AM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
Channels and tunnels, the tunnels are always cut out of solid rock below the channels, if you can imagine trying to cut a channel in the sand and how hard it is to keep from getting caveins from the soft gravels in the channels. the track haulage is installed on bedrock and except for the occasional cave ins the tunnel is stable. Once you start doing a tunnel you will know about where channels are running above by water that will be dripping down from the ceiling. They will cut an alcove out in the tunnel and bring in a drill and drill up until they reach gravel, the slurry coming down is tested until they reach gravel instead of rock coming down. Once they hit gravel they know exactly how far up the channel is. they will move over to both sides of the first drilling and do it again and measure the depth. They do that until they feel they are in the middle of the channel and sample the gravel they are getting. If it looks good they will build a tunnel there with track haulage and then build a raise up to the gravel and start working the channel. The Ruby already has mapping of all the known channels so most of that work is already done. Right now they will start working the know channels like the White and the Black. You can see from the pictures of the White channel how big the raise is. IMSHA wants the raise bigger in the event of a rescue they need it bigger. With the blasting permit they can now make the raise bigger and rebuild the chute coming down. Once that is done they can bring in the equipment to pull the gravel down and start processing it.
Friday, 11/08/13 10:36:19 AM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
Specimen Gold. In order to preserve the integrity of the specimen gold in the channels they have in place several procedures. First, when they blast a channel they will go in with a metal detector to check for any gold. If they find any they will pull it out at that time. When the gravel is pulled down into the ore cart and taken out to the mill and dumped they will check it again with metal detectors before pulling into the mill. As you know, specimen gold can bring 2 to 3 times more then the spot price of gold so they do what they can to preserve that.
Friday, 11/08/13 01:03:06 PM
Re: EarlyOne post# 49310
Post # of 49483
The mine sat idle for a long time. Each time there was a cave in the water would back up. The water line you see is indeed where the water was at that point. There were some places in the mine you could look up and see a small white circle which was an air pocket and at that point it was filled to the ceiling with water. Each cave in and water backup prevented the natural air circulation that's why the air vents were installed as the moved in further into the tunnel.
Friday, 11/08/13 01:15:07 PM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
[URL=http://i1090.photobucket.com/albums/i372/RBeau1954/Ruby%20Mine/Blackchannel.mp4]
Saturday, 11/09/13 12:14:04 AM
Re: None
Post # of 49483
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about this company after reading this forum the last few days with videos, pictures and now the safety director here then you must live under a rock. Go NBRI.
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