Photos of Stainsby's Shaft breakthrough by Biff |
Sat/Sun 06/07/ Sep 2008. The turn out for digging was the best yet with 13 diggers on Saturday and 8 Sunday. A concrete lintel was cast in place and 101 drums/rock bags brought out Saturday and over a 100 Sunday
At a depth of about 30m we broke through to a small chamber with a stream coming through it, with stemples in place on the floor, and a stemple slot cut into the wall
The stemple slot was made by the miners by hand drilling three holes close together in a horizontal line and then the rock above was chiselled out, that's good evidence of method they used
The good news is that its all clean washed and we can see down another four metres, the bad news is that it is horribly loose
We are about 4 to 5 metres lower than the bottom of the digging shaft, making the total depth about 29 - 30 metres; we need to survey now as the position of this breakthrough must be south of the main shaft but only by a few metres
The most likely source of the stream must be Blackmoor Swallet, as it had been raining a lot but we could be wrong?
We will enlarge the way into the water chamber (so we can make a quick getaway) scaffolding as we go and then we will build a scaffold cage in the chamber to dig down through the clean washed rocks using them with mortar to line the passage above keeping the mud at bay. Once we are below the stream we can divert the water out of our way or divert it to clean more mud away
Biff Frith
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Copyright © Biff Frith 2008 |
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