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Gold/Mining/Energy : Precious and Base Metal Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Condor who wrote (26009)	12/28/2003 7:04:42 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 39344

You could ventilate by vent tubing with a blower alone. It would help to have push-pull, of course. Water line could be bullhose, but that would get expensive I would warrant. Ditches seem de-riguer, no sense swimming to work. I don't believe screening is necessary, but a tighter bolt pattern is called for. Some sets as well. Loading, yes would be a station cut back, with a loop for the scoop to side load. Bays cut every so often would seem to be a good idea for track too. You could do it with electric scoops and jumbos. One thing I want to try is fuel cell, as it is cleaner than diesel and goes anywhere. This technology is mature now, (let's face it, Honda has a fuel fell car now.) but it may have to be re-engineered for someone's equipment. Perhaps tried out as a portable fuel cell power source for a jumbo at first. Diesel trackless seems cheaper to a lot of companies at first. It is much higher maintenance and higher unit cost and requires more ventilation. It's chief advantage is higher capacity and greater flexibility. Track tramming is cheaper overall in the end for most "small scale" mining. (Less than 5,000 tons per day) You have to sit down and crunch the numbers. There is no hard and fast answer. Ask one question and you generate 3 weeks of study. The whole thing requires careful global planning. During development/exploration stage, probably trackless drifting is the fastest/best. Alimak raising is the fastest and therefore cheapest. We will probably get an alimak or two in-house. Mining methods will vary as widths varies considerably, from 4 feet wide, to 57 feet wide of ore. Exploration drift lengths in one direction alone are 7500 feet. There may be more, possibly equal in the other direction, as it is open after 400 feet.. It is not an inconsiderable project all in all. First stage project to explore is 3,750,000 square feet to a depth of 500 feet in long section where ore values have been found in the past. That again is a distinct possibility that has not yet been explored. It probably does not stop at steel wall which is inserted at the property boundary. When you add the potential depth of 5,000 feet, it begins to take on a certain scale. Initial estimates based on drilling to date are that at least 50% could be ore of medium grade. If properly developed down the road it looks like the property could go to 6 thousand tons per day. We will start out at 300 tons/diem to determine exactly how the mining will proceed and succeed. My preliminary budget to get to this stage based on equipment we have lined up, and workings in place is 5 million. Milling is turn key toll mill for the first and probably second year as well. Exploration will take a lot of work and will proceed over the life of the project, but strike drilling will proceed for the first 4 years. On the section to date 400 holes could be drilled to 500 feet. When you take in additional properties and depth factors, it gets large. There is another operation of slightly smaller magnitude but more mature. (all equipment in place, blocked out ore) We may take that on as well, because it will double our tonnage at first and is high grade. (0.30 ounces) All in all by end of year two we should be at a production rate of 800 tons per day, at perhaps two locations, with perhaps 240 ounces production per day. The operational start up cost is 10 cents on the dollar to normal grass roots startup. This predicates a profitable operation from the get-go. And no permitting of environment save small considerations such as water pump out. Not hard to get. EC<:-]