Think waterslide at an amusement park. If you add a curved transition to the horizontal at the bottom, the bags will naturally decelerate. You could also elevate the end of that transition to make it easier to move them onto the cart.
Indeed, these two recommendations would greatly improve efficiency. Long term I think the bag method is probably not the solution (who am I to tell you, but just thinking out loud). A mine cart that can dump and let the raw material slide into the next cart, and the next one dump right into your truck would be sooo much more efficient. Handling each bag ten times is not efficient at all. Good luck, love your content.
Also, lining the chute with something like artificial turf in a few spots will slow the bags with friction. Or use packing tape around outside bag a couple times. Really anything other than that slow and tiring method of pulling that contraption back up every time. Work smarter not harder. Any time you can invest in better tracks, better carts, bags falling straight into cart, electric wench to pull the carts down the tracks, no bags at all just ore in carts into a dump truck etc.. will pay for itself.
Something to keep in mind for next season, bigger wheels have less rolling resistance, even an inch or two on circumference makes a huge difference so try upgrading the cart with those little casters and see the difference! As they say work smarter not harder! 😉👍
I have been suggesting this same thing over several episodes now. Even standard galvanized sheet metal would work. Line the chutes with the metal, layering them as you would do on a roof with shingles.
Purchased hpde the other day. It was $279 for a 4x8’ x 1/2” thick. Positive the really thin stuff is significantly less. Maybe once they crush all that ore it may be worth it. Not having to use the buoy method would save a lot of time
55gal plastic drums. Cut them in half top to bottom(or maybe even thirds)and cut off the tops and bottoms. Use them as 3' shingles and line the entire raise. If you can find the drums at $10 apiece you can do 60' of raise for a hundred. Cutting with a fine tooth blade in a skilsaw is easy and the entire load would fit on a single empty cart to bring it in from the portal.
Your carts need slightly larger wheels . By increasing the diameter only a couple of inches , they will be much easier to push . The smaller wheel has much more turning resistance . Make them as large as you can get away with . The larger wheels will also distribute the weight better upon the contact points on the tracks as well .
All I can say is your lucky to have had the crew from Mine Operator willing to help you out. Real labor cost serious money, work comp, unemployment etc. Guess ya saved a ton of money by "collabing" with some other TH-camrs. Smarter not harder I suppose...
The greatest impediments to moving the ore is the bags and all the carrying. It would be far more efficient to muck into an ore bin that can be rolled all the way to the chute, then dump the ore down the chute - either into another wheeled bin (preferable) or a pile where it could be shoveled into another bin. That bin should have track all the way out the mine entrance to a storage bin where the ore can be dumped until you want to fill your truck. You might have to do a bit of work to improve the chute and track runs, but any reduction in the need to manually lift ore will be well worthwhile.
Absolutely this. Small mine operators have jerry-rigged the craziest orecarts over the years and left them lying around abandoned mines. just a wood box on pivots with (optional) metal lining. size to what you're comfortable moving in the mine. Use bigger wheels and you can move heavier loads easier.
Bring that portable mill out there and get some actual ore carts inside the mine and build chutes that will dump directly into the bins and or carts to crush the ore and then process it right outside the portal. When the season is done drive the processing plant home and park it for next season.
Chute Solution: Jason, can you let the shoot fill up from the bottom to the top. Someone takes one off the bottom of the shoot, then someone adds one to the top of the shoot. That way the bags move down the shoot one bag length at a time. No inertia to break open the bags. You may have to steepen or put teflon sheets, flexible cutting board plastic, or aluminum sheeting to speed up some of the chute. I left some more suggestions in a reply below. Things like a work table so you don't have to lift the bags from ground level to the trolley. A wide lever to pry the bottom bag out if the bag weight stacked on top is too much. You could also make a semi circle cover for areas in the chute that are too steep or are problematic allowing bags to fall out of line. Miners know the best solution is the easiest. I love your channel. Here is $5 just because. Please keep up the great work!
Interesting idea. The problem is it think is that the end is to steep at the moment for that work. But like others already pointed out if you can make the end gradually curve into a horizontal space, preferably even as a working table you can do it.
@@barthoving2053 It does not matter how steep it is at the end as long as they stack or do not fall out of the chute. A semi circle lid could remedy this if necessary. Think buckets cut in half arching over the top. You will have to let the bags that initially fill the shoot down easily. Once the chute is full you just pull the bottom one out. Maybe some type of wide lever might be needed to overcome the weight of the bags following in the chute but that is easily addressed. Then one comes out, and the rest slide down one spot to take its place. A working table would be nice so they would not have to lift the bags from ground level up unto the cart. Slowly rolly, easy peasy.
@@mbmmllc Thank you so much for making the best TH-cam channel! I have no idea how I stumbled upon you (maybe thank the Almighty algorithm?), but I am so glad I did. I try to tell everyone who may be interested about it. May the gold dust stick to your boots! 💰
@@mbmmllcvertical chute with angled baffles alternating every few feet, to maintain fall speed. a single screw on middle of each side of the baffles would allow for initial adjustments.
line the chute with linoleum flooring, install shingle style, get remnants for free from a flooring guy. use roofing tacks or a hammer tacker. install a playground slide at the base of the transition, frame it up 2 ft from ground plane. 20ft long skid chute , bags will slide to a stop or a car tire to arrest the bag . one day of improvements, will save you days of buoy handling . Thx I love hard work, I can watch it all day long. Best miner content TH-cam!
I have an Idea that I think would work perfect. 18" PVC pipe. They make PVC for sewers, duct work.. The thickness would be up to you. Sewer pipe would work great. At the very bottom just add an extra 20 feet of pipe with the side facing up cut open. Just need it long enough so the bag loses its momentum. You are basically building a giant water slide. Keeping everything inside an enclosed area to avoid any bags jumping off the track. You would not need to slow the bags down at all if you have that run at the end. Just drop them in . leave the end of the cut pipe raised about 3 feet up so you can just slide the bag down to the cart. *Sorry for the loss of your friend down here on earth. He is just up finding the gold vein before you arrive.
Hey Jason Here's my take. Probably more detailed then needed. I'm not a miner but I have watched way WAY too many mine exploration videos. The use around 18" to 24" pvs sewer pipe is the basics of my thoughts. Do it like the old timers did with some modern materials throw in. They primarily all seem to have used the same system. Assumption made they did it that way because it worked. Blast it, muck it, dump it down a hole, pour it into a cart and roll it outside. Since you already have a open raise you need ore guide tubes. Lose the bags there killing you guy's bodies. Did those skinny little under fed miners 100 year ago bag the ore and lift each rock ten times? NO!😮. Spend this winter fabbing more rail and some dumping ore carts. So... Extend the rails to the face. Muck it into a cart, roll it to the raise where the hole in the net is and side dump it into a ore shoot (large dia pipe). Lose the intermediate landing stops . Make pvc pipe shoots all the way to the haulage way. One dumping to the next no hands on (may need some hoppers and deflectors). Cut extra windows in the pipe for access where troubles may occur. With the poor communication caused by the distance and other noise having a ore door at the haulage level of the ore shoot would be a good safety device. Dumping directly into another tilting ore cart. If you require it to be bagged, do it at the truck loading area. I believe this type of system although requiring a fair amount of rework and expense would hold down the manual labor. If you plan on doing extensive workings for many seasons I would chalk this years efforts up to hands on learning. Yea this is kind of long, but you asked for it 😂!
At the end with the buoy rig an appropriate amount of weight on the other end of the rope to bring the buoy back up faster than by hand and easier. Pulley quality of course affects ease of of operation.
That would reduce friction and speed the bags, but I think the corners of rocks poking through the bags, as well as well the grit and dirt, would probably wear through the HDPE, then it would cause problems/need to be replaced. Also, it would speed up the bags, which is part of the current problem.
EXCELLENT SERIES! I can't stop watching. Efficiency ideas since you asked: 1) ORE: Ditch the bags and dump ore down the chutes right into another ore cart, using smooth pipe as others have said. You lift the ore once instead of 10 times. 2) Tracks: Take an angle grinder up and clean up the rails at the stope for easier rolling. On the 2x4 track corners that are sticking, maybe a router radius would help. 3) Headroom. Take a couple days and blast off those big headbanger rocks that protrude into the travel paths so your miners can move faster standing more upright. 4) Lighting. They make nice 200' strings of LED worklights that use hardly no power. You can have a solar power bank and/or a little generator sitting outside while you're working. This is for speed and for safety.
Better idea: You have an exit portal not very far above the working face? A ropeway for ore bags could handle the terrain and I think they are commonly used in the norhwest in logging. Gets rid of all the winding through the mountain. You could take the rope way down to the working face and use the energy from the big drop outside to make the small lift inside the mine.
I was thinking about the same thing… use the exit portal to get the much out. Some sort of tram system with high strength rope-or cable I know it’s a long way… but you have gravity on your side right into the truck.
You are looking for something like those auto-retracting hose reels. With a cable attached to a strong coil spring (clock spring) in the reel, the bags would slow down progressively until they reach the bottom, due too the coil compressing inside the reel, and after unhooking the bag the cable will retract automatically to receive the next bag above.
Also Jason ever been to the dry cleaners? What if you used a system similar to what they employ with a conveyor belt running along the mine roof. Hooks spaced far apart so no excessive load and possibly using steel wire turned by a motor. But theoretically you could have people loading bags directly from your stope and the conveyor could terminate directly in the loading area.
I would think some poly sheets creating a non-abrasive slide, and then at the bottom of the chute you have to decrease the angle so they slow down a little and don't explode at the bottom, 1 at a time is a huge bottleneck
Take plastic corrugated pipe from top to bottom with a hatch where the bags may get caught . If you use smooth pipe take miners dumping carts and just fill carts with no bags and fill carts directly. Dump cart directly into containers on bed of truck with ability to lift off with front end loader. Best of luck.
After reading these comments , some people have great ideas! I like the idea of cart dumping into chute then landing into either hopper you can just pull lever to fill bags or another cart . Guess the easier you can make it the more you’re gonna get from it .
Ideas here - definitely make the 550 your standard hauler. Way more capacity. Put 4 steel bulk containers in it, devise a chute to drop the bags in from the portal porch, moving the chute or truck once a container is full. Feel like bag stacking is a major part of your handling time and not really necessary at the end, you can put a bulk container by the mill with a forklift and run bags out of that just as well as a pallet. On the drop i think you could probably link a few of those bouys up and use a counterweight to drop more weight each time, but safely. Maybe add some poly strips to the big sweeping corners to make cart pushing easier. Love this series and appreciate the share, much respect! I think your friend would be really proud of what you're doing there.
Drill some holes in the wall a few hundred feet apart and put some loop anchors in them. Put a winch on each cart and have the cart reel itself toward each anchor
Hey Jason! Pushing the karts on thoses rails is a lot of efforts. I suggest 2 things to improve the ride; the idea is to reduce friction. No need to be perfect, It will improve a lot with little efforts, then improve little with a lot of efforts ! 1°) clean them 1 time with a steel wire brush on a portable angle grinder (no need to be perfect or spend a lot of time, just knock the rust on the top of the rails) 2°) the rails will get dirty no matter what (debris, small rocks, mud, etc...), add a brush/groom in front of the karts to clean the top of the rails as they go (just to remove small rocks/debris on the top of the rails) 3°) bonus, roughly brush grease on the rails after the wire brush cleaning. Hope it helps, keep the hard work 😉😘
Jason think about a couple of eletric bike kits. Use a chain drive in the cart with heavy duty rubber side out casters. Even have it remotely controlled. With the right gearing it should help pull the carts the 500ft distance
Jason, you are so blessed with a very rich mine. Not only that, but you are operating as safe as you can with the challenges that can change quickly. My hat is off to you and your mentor, Lane. I'm so sorry you lost a close friend. I can tell that you really appreciated the knowledge passed along from him. He sounded like an incredible person, just like you. I like the idea of using the buoy bag for moving the ore from higher up. You mentioned the twists and turns in the chute and the problems associated with it. The control of the ore bag down the chute is the main problem it seems. If you ever want to try my suggestions to line the chutes with galvanized sheet metal, it will stop a lot of wear and tear on the bags making them reusable. However, controlling the speed of descent is a huge challenge as the bags will slide faster on a metal lined chute. Furthermore, you must also consider the safety issues that come with the long rope on the buoy. As shown, if any length of the rope becomes entangled around a foot or ankle, there will be a potentially serious medical situation located far away from help. Also to be taken into account is the amount of time you're spending on putting the ore in the buoy, sliding it down, taking it out, pulling the buoy up... You get my point. Think about how you can build something better than the buoy, to move your ore in that leg of the mine. It can be done to maximize time, money and safety. I have faith in you. As far as getting from the blacksmith's shop on the truck bed, build a small shute that can be moved up out of the way or to the side. Extend it over the bed of the truck. You could hand slide one or two bags across it with minimal effort and drop them onto the pallets in the truck. This would speed up the process and save your back by not lifting/toting them as much. Kind of like an assembly line.. One person puts the ore on the 'chute' and slides it to the second. That person makes sure that the ore doesn't go too fast, but keeps moving. The third person is in the truck bed to make sure the ore is stacked safely. You could also trade out positions so that one person doesn't get worn out. Just an idea. Thank you so very much, Jason! You are a remarkable miner and have the creative skill to solve problems! Sharing your mind with us is very appreciated! Blessings from Alabama ❤️
You asked for a suggestion on the long slide. To slow the bags down you need a gate that is perpendicular (runs across) the width of the slide. Hinge the gate so that when a bag hits it it pushes it open. But, use a spring hinge. The force of the bag coming down will hit the gate to open it so it can proceed further. The spring hinge will absorb a lot of the forward energy of the bag. Put the gate just a yard or so above the landing area so the bag slows down and then drops softly in the landing area. You can also add gates along the length of the slide in multiple places if needed which will make is to the bags slow down along the any without developing too much forward energy.
The mucker truckers, round 14 ... I think it is awesome to see what the old timers went through; I hope the new timers strike it rich beyond their wildest dreams ! R.I.P Lane ... till we meet in heaven! 😇 Thanks for the positive attitude, Chad and Harry
I think the buoy is a great sled for the ore, my one suggestions in use much larger diameter pulleys, especially the one closest to your person pulling in the rope. It will make pulling SO much easier. Same with your casters, a larger diameter will make life mucho better.
Agreed on the caster diameter but I think they need to ditch the sand bags all together. Redesign the chute or just line it with sheet metal, make the carts on hinges so they dump into the chute and the chute empties right back into the next cart onto the lower level.
9:52 Attach a second rope to the bouy that goes just above the work area and then down a side area with a counterweight to pull the empty bucket back up.
Milwaukee battery right angle drill to spin a car rim to pull loaded carts with a rope. Easy to push an empty cart. Or a vac truck by the emergency exit to suck the muck.
@Jason @mbmmllc - your buoy idea is fun, but it’s still inefficient in terms of time and energy pulling it back up, so I have two different options which can be used in combination. Solution 1 - Simply extend the end of the chute with a couple lower angle sections and the final being parallel to the ground. (Think a water slide transitioning into the pool of water at the end or how a bowling ball slows into the rack). Solution 2 - Construct some archways over your chute and hang thick rubber (think industrial mud flaps), each flap will slow the bag of material but flex out of the way allowing it to pass. If you require more speed reduction, you can just add a mass on the backside (think slapping water versus moving your hand through it slowly).
Add waist-high platforms at either end of the chute to load and catch the sacks. It'll save your backs and make it more efficient to load and unload the buoy
If loading with bags then sending down, use a loop of line such that one end will have the buoy thingy and the other a counter weight. That will help lift the empty buoy back up. Cylindrical rollers above the chute arranged in a “V” will guide rope back up with fewer hangups.
you would wanne have a bowe/dropfender at each end of the robe so you can drop one wit a bag and get the otherone back up from the weight of the one you drop. safes you energy
Two buoys if possible, with a braking system. Load one at the top and unload the lower one. They’re would be no lifting or effort really needed, other than loading and unloading the buoys.
Hi buddy if it was my operation , assuming I could find a good water supply I would high grade close to the ore face and pipe the tailings out as a slurry, by suspending the tailing pipe and attaching a few vibrators to it at critical points the muck should just flow . Ovcorce getting a couple of small crushers in there would be a challenge but compared to all that hand mucking? Adding a sluce out side the mine prayer to a tailings trench / pond would be worth considering but carrying jars of gold out and the rest running through a say 3”pipe has to be way more efficient than 400 bags. To be honest I haven’t tried doing this but in my home state of Tasmania ( I’m an Australian ) they moved high grade iron ore about 40 miles from the savage river mine to bolke tankers in a pipeline as a slurry. Love the show cheers
There truly is somthing special about bringing somthing left for dead back to life. It's special to see these rails, transfers, hollages, doing their job once again. I also bring derylict engines and machinery back to life when i have spare time. The satisfaction, such a motivation. And visitors can spectate in awe
Watching this made me think of the 60's era movie "The Great Escape". Could you setup waypoints with electric winches along your haulageway? Pull the cart from waypoint to waypoint with the winch. Pull it back when it's unloaded. A simple eyebolt on each end of the cart and quick clips on the ends of the cables. Tough to do around corners, but for the long strait runs it might save a bunch of labor...Or mount a battery powered winch on each end of the cart. Mount the cable end to a fixed spot in the tunnel and walk behind the cart controlling winch. Can't wait for next season!
11:25 Uggg. You have velocity, yet you're dropping the bag to the ground, only to have to pick it up. Look at some playground slides with runout. Make a 4' high table that the last shoot angles or curves onto instead of straight down. Then the bag has a chance to slow down on this table. NOW, the worker doesn't have to pick the bag off the ground, simply grab it from the table to set down to the cart.
I also think pool slides, curve play slides, or slip and slides would work well because it is so wet in there. Maybe put sides on the truck or even a truck made into a dump truck. To maybe get the bags into the dump bed or truck bed from your landing outside put a slide or a chute of some type on a swivel to load the bed right to left and be able to move up and down. I guess like a machine gun on a plane. That way you can move the truck when needed to fill it back to front. You may need to rest the slide on the truck bed slides to make it sturdy, but you might be able to freely move the slide where you need. Using curved slides inside the mine will keep the damage down on the sandbags. Swing set slides and pool slides come in so many different sizes and curves. With it being so wet they are made for it. Also, they are easy to get your hands on cheap or free. When you are out driving around look for old beat-up swing sets. Everyone with kids has had one or more. Just stop and ask. It is amazing how many people are tired of looking at it and mowing it. Many people just want them gone out of their yards. People refurbishing pools normally change the slides and just throw them away because they fade and look damaged. Probably take all the brackets and metal that comes with them. They are useful. Even the lightweight metal of old trampolines is sturdy and very handy. I have a dump truck and I use an old trampoline mat with the springs to cover my dump bed. The air flows through it. I get dome metal half circle wire holders I pull the mat tight and use the springs to lock to my bed. When done it just rolls up for storage in a box. I am female so I have to think very far outside the box. My Dad and Brother often look at me like I have lost my mind and make fun of me, but it really is funny how I catch them doing jobs my weird way. These are just some thoughts of how a female that is 5ft. would maybe be able to move rocks. Who knows if you could get enough different types and sizes of slides you may be able to get rid of the sandbags and just move the rock and muck to your truck just using the slides. I enjoy your videos. Thank you for all the info.
Jason: can you go out the escape portal that’s close to the face? Maybe use a cable or strong synthetic rope to get to the road. Watching your videos it seams the exit by the face wouldn’t be to far to the blacksmith shop or straight to a landing area on the road. I use a synthetic rope to lower my heavy dredge into deep canyon with two anchor points and a pulley. I think you could do it relatively inexpensive. But imo by far the fastest easiest way out and into the truck. The synthetic rope I use is 3/8” with a 12k lb rating. I would use those large totes… have a rope/cable anchored straight above the exit straight to a tree across the road. Have a pulley with a hook for the bag that rides the line. There’s other details but that’s the idea 🤷🏼♂️
Love the series thanks for the great content, sorry for your loss btw. Get a stronger rope make 5 + knots, space them out, have buoy on ever knot and let 5+ down in a row. For the carts i would use a system out of snatch block pulley and rope where you just have to handle the rope per hand or with a Winch, ofc you guys need to improve the tracks and the shoot, but that would make your guys life way easier in my opinion.
I like your pulley system but if you raised the top pulley positioning higher and daisy chained a few buoys together it would certain raise the total bandwidth.
I was thinking the same but with a cable and a harness for the front so 2 people can move a larger load on 1 cart but for the metal rail I can see the winch idea working or have multiple carts that can easily attach/detach to each other so the winch doesn't need to pull so far, basically having a train
Get some steel tubing, a welder and a tubing bender. Make yourself a sandbag slide, use gravity to pull down the ore. Think of it like a spiral staircase. I'll even draw you up a blueprint of the design that I believe would meet your needs.
Wouldn't there be less repeative handling if you drilled & blasted from the opposite end of the drift you just started? Remember, the more you let the ore drop & fall against itself, the less you have to crush & mill. Think enclosed chutes & collection boxes. I remember a 1/4 mi. chute at the Cochise Stronghold of Arizona that dropped 600-800 ft.
Outstanding vid. Mining is good old fashioned hard work. Watching you guys get it done is a blast. We get to learn things that many of us will never be able to do. Thank you gents.
Jason, at the buoy drop, get a small dock cleat to tie off the rope when you pull the buoy up, just a couple flipped half-hitches over the prongs is all you'd need. Much safer than standing on a rope to hold it against a weight. Can't wait to see the crush and shake.
You might want to place a small boom crane on the outside of the mine portal, just to pick the bags and set them in the truck bed..Also get some fork lift pallets probably plastic is stronger, and more durable.
Loving these videos. So informative and you guys did so much hard work. Hope it really pays off for you guys in the end. Can't wait for the next one 😃👍🇨🇦
Jason, Lots of good ideas below but let me give you one. You live in the Bellingham area. Lots of people commercially and recreationally crab fish in your area, and most save their backs and legs (after suffering from hand pulling 50# pots) by using electric capstan drive gurdies. I'm quite sure you can find one or two used ones at reasonable prices. Hook them up with a good gen set, set an open face block or two at appropriate places and mount the capstans so that it can be moved to various places in your mine and let it do the hard work of pulling carts, lowering and retrieving bags etc. Much easier to push buttons and reset lines in different open sided blocks at various bends in the shafts (if needed) than using you back. A chute from the end of your mine headframe platform to your truck also makes sense; a wider chute that you can put ten bags on a small pallet and back down the chute again with the capstan. Good off season project to play with. Great video series! Good luck and swamp out all the gold fines on bedrock before you move away from mucking an area....get it all!
i thought you would have done this by now: in the chute put two buoys on either end of the rope, the loaded one will make the empty one come up by itself. much faster, but there are risks of tangling the whole thing. also pad the bottom of the buoys to dissipate the energy.
I apologize, this will probably be a little long winded and it may not work the way I see it in my head. Instead of mucking into sand bags at the working face, I would attach wheel barrows without the legs or wheel to the carts using the Adel as the attachment point so that it can still dump. Run the track to the chute so that you can dump the ore down the chute. Line the track up at the bottom of the chute so that the cart below can catch it was it comes down. Wait to bag it until you're at the portal of the mine. Sorry to hear about your friend.
Shute ideas: Fabric or carpet chunks to scrub speed in fast spots? Gymnastics mats on the walls in the twisty bits? This is definitely your biggest bottleneck, as long as it takes 2 people to do this operation it will be hurting efficiency. Love the progress!
22:48 As a Millwright, I have installed and serviced millions of feet of conveyors of ALL types. It's a fairly simple matter to setup narrow belt variable speed conveyors to move those bags out of the mine. Figure just ball park $70 to $100 a foot maybe half that if you scrounge used stuff. Put a drive motor every 10 to 20 feet and a BIG generator!!
How did the previous mine operator blast and get all those huge rocks lining along the tracks? But, you end up with tiny stuff. Will you be making larger rocks soon?
I think those big chunks are just host rock and it breaks up bigger and the quarts vein shatters up smaller. I am guessing that because those big chunks were left behind and have no value while the small chunks of gold bearing quarts are always removed.And Jason has just been blasting quarts vein.
The more powder you use the finer the muck produced. The large rocks you see are the host rock they had to remove to make the shaft large enough to work in. Jason spoke of doing the same thing to achieve a taller working height to the mine.
A verticle paddle wheel where the paddles hold the ore bags on the way down and collapse on the way up to save space. Multiple dc motors and Libatts for power to partially automate the carts, especially that 550 ft run (maybe add rc type control so no one has to walk it... depends on budget and pain levels 😂 I would definitely automate whatever you can to reduce the repetitive walks, climbs and lifting... conveyor belt to bring raw materials to the chute then bag as it falls is another option. Good luck!
Instead of bagging, how about dump carts and ore shutes, and an ore bin at the bottom? Really enjoying your development of your new, old mine. Can't wait to see the values when you process the ore!
I can appreciate all of your hard work @ 6 yrs. Old I was in old mining shafts in No. Idaho, that had no human entrance for 100 yrs. Plus. I went on to attend college and enter the mining industry. I was @ Sonora/Jamestown, CA. The very day an 86 lb. nugget of gold blocked and came down the conveyor belt. The old sixteen to one mine.
Try rubber flaps alternating down the chute so they slow the bag before it hits the bottom. Old tires may work, if you cut the side wall and leave the tread at the end you have a easy attachment point.
Would be awesome to see less human touches of those sand bags from cart to cart. Depending how long it is going to take to get the re-routing done (drilling/blasting/mucking etc.) to shorten the ore haulage route it would be awesome to see it go from cart to cart with little/no human touches. There is a good amount of energy created when those bags go down the longer ore chute---great opportunity to use that energy to move something up the same time something goes down...or move something laterally when something goes down, experiment with a looped rope that brings full buoys down and empty ones up. Also, thinking if you made those pallets custom into a pallet bin with nice heavy duty sides and a lid, that way you wouldn't have to stack them by hand, could find a way to let gravity/something mechanical to drop them into each bin. You would still have the pallet underneath to move with a forklift, etc. and even if a bag exploded getting dumped in your precious ore wouldn't spill anywhere. It would be contained in your pallet bin. In general finding a way to remove the sand bag system entirely would be huge for you guys! Looking forward to seeing some of this crushed and milled! Keep it up! I am a bit jealous, would love to own my own mine someday. Great series so far! :)
Hi Jason, I had mentioned before about getting some metal roller planks. Unloading trucks. The planks are about 16 inches wide, Rollers. We would throw shaving bags or grain on them, then push them down onto the pallets or with rocks on your bed of truck. Works great.
my idea would be to rebuild the bottom of the chute so it plains out to flat like a kids playground slide so it don't end with that drop... the rope and pulley seems to be a total pain.. so that's what I would do.. re engineer something at the bottom like waterslides have to eat up the momentum and somehow slide smothly and come to rest as horizontally as possible.. maybe like a table catch.. then you don't have to bend over to pick them up either.. just slide them off the table to cart. (edit) you built that in a hurry... nothing wrong with retooling things that aren't working efficiently.
At the end of the chute, you could use more and bigger tyres. Don't lay them flat on the ground but put them in upside position as you would roll them up the chute. Put a rope or two through the tyres to fix them in position. Pull them down to the ground so that the can give way, at the impact. Easy solution and much better dampening as the bags are stopped over a longer distance than in your solution. Thanks for your videos and good luck from Switzerland!
Also, at the end, you should be unloading your bags from the track onto the pallet they will sit on in the truck. What you need is a lifter that can then move the loaded pallet down onto the truck. You won't be able to do that by hand, but you might be able to do it by pushing a few buttons or moving a few levers. I would try an overhead beam of some kind that extends out and then over to where the truck is parked. Keep the beam level. The beam has to be strong enough to support your loads, and transport them along its length. You could even use a piece of metal rail over a wooden beam, if you had to. Just over-engineer it, so that it can handle way more than you think it will ever have to. Then you can figure out a mechanical way to drive the lifted pallet along the rail. You could be drinking a beer and doing it, as a way of doing a victory dance.
Just build your chute with a less abrasive material for starters, or just staple in some thick plactic sheeting if you dont want to replace the whole thing, then level the descent at the bottom to slow the bags down a bit and like someone else said raise the end of the shoot so its at the same height as the cart... that being said, and im sure youre already thinking about this, if you had some carts that pivot up and dump into a chute, and that chute empty right back into another cart, that would be the way to go. Cut the sands bags out of the equation all together Awesome stuff guys, keep up the hard work and can't WAIT FOR NEXT SEASON!
Side boards on the truck, stakes out. Big heavy canvas tarp inside the bed sides on the 550, toss the bags off the platform into the truck and drag the bags all out when you get to the mill
can you take some blue plastic barrels, cut them in half making a half pipe of each, then attach them together making a longer half pipe??? those would be much slicker and easier for the bags to slide down....then closer to the bottom you need to make a better angle so its not coming down so fast and make a nicer padded area for the bags so they no longer break open...this way you can get rid of the rope and just put the bags down the barrel half pipe to the bottom, bags wont break......you also need to make better carts or rail system to transport the bags to the shoot/half pipe to the bottom........hope this helps and gives ya some good ideas to work with.
You can use a counterweight to slow the bag going down the chute by creating some resistance/tension on the line. Another really simple way to do it is fill the chute bag after bag. So for example you might have 20 bags butting up against each other from the bottom of the chute to the top. Just take 1 bag from bottom, the stack moves down freeing space for 1 more at the top. Take one, add one, take one, add one. The bags will never fall more than 1 bag length.
OK Jason. Here is an idea for removing the bags without breaking them. Cut off about 4 feet off the bottom of the ramp and create a table instead at about waist height. Let the bags come down t full speed and slow down on the horizontal table. Make the table along the wall for say 10 or 15 feet and add carpet on top for friction and not destroy the bags. Have the guy at bottom of the chute grab the bags off the table at waist height and put onto the carts. Any time you're not bending over and picking up from the ground is a good thing. Another idea for a chute versus straight chunks of wood. Guys in construction doing demolition use these garbage cans that are chained together, think about this idea snaking it's way down the raise creating a twisting chute that allows for debris to slide down easily without getting stuck, should work with bags. Have this come onto the table as well for easy moving to the cart. Good luck.
Think waterslide at an amusement park. If you add a curved transition to the horizontal at the bottom, the bags will naturally decelerate. You could also elevate the end of that transition to make it easier to move them onto the cart.
Indeed, these two recommendations would greatly improve efficiency. Long term I think the bag method is probably not the solution (who am I to tell you, but just thinking out loud). A mine cart that can dump and let the raw material slide into the next cart, and the next one dump right into your truck would be sooo much more efficient. Handling each bag ten times is not efficient at all. Good luck, love your content.
👍
This idea is the answer, I hope he undertakes your plan!
That's a brilliant idea. They could even use actual playground slides and that might prevent the bags from splitting on the way down.
Also, lining the chute with something like artificial turf in a few spots will slow the bags with friction. Or use packing tape around outside bag a couple times. Really anything other than that slow and tiring method of pulling that contraption back up every time.
Work smarter not harder. Any time you can invest in better tracks, better carts, bags falling straight into cart, electric wench to pull the carts down the tracks, no bags at all just ore in carts into a dump truck etc.. will pay for itself.
Something to keep in mind for next season, bigger wheels have less rolling resistance, even an inch or two on circumference makes a huge difference so try upgrading the cart with those little casters and see the difference! As they say work smarter not harder! 😉👍
I agree but looking at the amount of rust on those rails, they could do with some descaling.
Line the chute with HPDE sheet. Make radius to cradle the corners, flatten out the landing so they slide to a stop instead of hitting the bottom.
I have been suggesting this same thing over several episodes now. Even standard galvanized sheet metal would work. Line the chutes with the metal, layering them as you would do on a roof with shingles.
I came here to say the same. Hdpe would be a big improvement to minimize friction and also move the bags further along.
This is good but HDPE is pricy. Something cheap like old vinyl flooring, with HDPE used as bumpers to smooth the corners.
Purchased hpde the other day. It was $279 for a 4x8’ x 1/2” thick. Positive the really thin stuff is significantly less. Maybe once they crush all that ore it may be worth it. Not having to use the buoy method would save a lot of time
55gal plastic drums. Cut them in half top to bottom(or maybe even thirds)and cut off the tops and bottoms. Use them as 3' shingles and line the entire raise. If you can find the drums at $10 apiece you can do 60' of raise for a hundred. Cutting with a fine tooth blade in a skilsaw is easy and the entire load would fit on a single empty cart to bring it in from the portal.
Your carts need slightly larger wheels . By increasing the diameter only a couple of inches , they will be much easier to push . The smaller wheel has much more turning resistance . Make them as large as you can get away with . The larger wheels will also distribute the weight better upon the contact points on the tracks as well .
Yes, the old mine cart wheels were much larger in diameter for just that reason. Of course they were moving about a ton of ore at a time.
All I can say is your lucky to have had the crew from Mine Operator willing to help you out. Real labor cost serious money, work comp, unemployment etc. Guess ya saved a ton of money by "collabing" with some other TH-camrs. Smarter not harder I suppose...
The greatest impediments to moving the ore is the bags and all the carrying. It would be far more efficient to muck into an ore bin that can be rolled all the way to the chute, then dump the ore down the chute - either into another wheeled bin (preferable) or a pile where it could be shoveled into another bin. That bin should have track all the way out the mine entrance to a storage bin where the ore can be dumped until you want to fill your truck.
You might have to do a bit of work to improve the chute and track runs, but any reduction in the need to manually lift ore will be well worthwhile.
Absolutely this. Small mine operators have jerry-rigged the craziest orecarts over the years and left them lying around abandoned mines. just a wood box on pivots with (optional) metal lining. size to what you're comfortable moving in the mine. Use bigger wheels and you can move heavier loads easier.
I can't wait to see how much gold you get after processing
Yes wish they would tell us
Let‘s guesstimate.
25g/metric ton
Bring that portable mill out there and get some actual ore carts inside the mine and build chutes that will dump directly into the bins and or carts to crush the ore and then process it right outside the portal. When the season is done drive the processing plant home and park it for next season.
Chute Solution: Jason, can you let the shoot fill up from the bottom to the top. Someone takes one off the bottom of the shoot, then someone adds one to the top of the shoot. That way the bags move down the shoot one bag length at a time. No inertia to break open the bags. You may have to steepen or put teflon sheets, flexible cutting board plastic, or aluminum sheeting to speed up some of the chute. I left some more suggestions in a reply below. Things like a work table so you don't have to lift the bags from ground level to the trolley. A wide lever to pry the bottom bag out if the bag weight stacked on top is too much. You could also make a semi circle cover for areas in the chute that are too steep or are problematic allowing bags to fall out of line. Miners know the best solution is the easiest. I love your channel. Here is $5 just because. Please keep up the great work!
Interesting idea. The problem is it think is that the end is to steep at the moment for that work. But like others already pointed out if you can make the end gradually curve into a horizontal space, preferably even as a working table you can do it.
@@barthoving2053 It does not matter how steep it is at the end as long as they stack or do not fall out of the chute. A semi circle lid could remedy this if necessary. Think buckets cut in half arching over the top. You will have to let the bags that initially fill the shoot down easily. Once the chute is full you just pull the bottom one out. Maybe some type of wide lever might be needed to overcome the weight of the bags following in the chute but that is easily addressed. Then one comes out, and the rest slide down one spot to take its place. A working table would be nice so they would not have to lift the bags from ground level up unto the cart. Slowly rolly, easy peasy.
Thanks so much for the super thanks and the suggestion!
@@mbmmllc Thank you so much for making the best TH-cam channel! I have no idea how I stumbled upon you (maybe thank the Almighty algorithm?), but I am so glad I did. I try to tell everyone who may be interested about it. May the gold dust stick to your boots! 💰
@@mbmmllcvertical chute with angled baffles alternating every few feet, to maintain fall speed. a single screw on middle of each side of the baffles would allow for initial adjustments.
line the chute with linoleum flooring, install shingle style, get remnants for free from a flooring guy. use roofing tacks or a hammer tacker. install a playground slide at the base of the transition, frame it up 2 ft from ground plane. 20ft long skid chute , bags will slide to a stop or a car tire to arrest the bag . one day of improvements, will save you days of buoy handling . Thx I love hard work, I can watch it all day long. Best miner content TH-cam!
You guys are proof that you don't have to be a bit touched to be a miner; but it sure helps! Thanks for another great video.
I have an Idea that I think would work perfect.
18" PVC pipe. They make PVC for sewers, duct work..
The thickness would be up to you.
Sewer pipe would work great.
At the very bottom just add an extra 20 feet of pipe with the side facing up cut open.
Just need it long enough so the bag loses its momentum.
You are basically building a giant water slide.
Keeping everything inside an enclosed area to avoid any bags jumping off the track.
You would not need to slow the bags down at all if you have that run at the end.
Just drop them in .
leave the end of the cut pipe raised about 3 feet up so you can just slide the bag down to the cart.
*Sorry for the loss of your friend down here on earth.
He is just up finding the gold vein before you arrive.
Would it be dumb to rig a sandbox full of sand at the bottom to catch the bags so they don't break?
Hey Jason
Here's my take. Probably more detailed then needed.
I'm not a miner but I have watched way WAY too many mine exploration videos. The use around 18" to 24" pvs sewer pipe is the basics of my thoughts.
Do it like the old timers did with some modern materials throw in. They primarily all seem to have used the same system. Assumption made they did it that way because it worked. Blast it, muck it, dump it down a hole, pour it into a cart and roll it outside. Since you already have a open raise you need ore guide tubes.
Lose the bags there killing you guy's bodies. Did those skinny little under fed miners 100 year ago bag the ore and lift each rock ten times? NO!😮. Spend this winter fabbing more rail and some dumping ore carts.
So... Extend the rails to the face. Muck it into a cart, roll it to the raise where the hole in the net is and side dump it into a ore shoot (large dia pipe). Lose the intermediate landing stops . Make pvc pipe shoots all the way to the haulage way. One dumping to the next no hands on (may need some hoppers and deflectors). Cut extra windows in the pipe for access where troubles may occur. With the poor communication caused by the distance and other noise having a ore door at the haulage level of the ore shoot would be a good safety device. Dumping directly into another tilting ore cart. If you require it to be bagged, do it at the truck loading area.
I believe this type of system although requiring a fair amount of rework and expense would hold down the manual labor. If you plan on doing extensive workings for many seasons I would chalk this years efforts up to hands on learning.
Yea this is kind of long, but you asked for it 😂!
I catch myself smiling while I’m watching these videos. So much fun 🙏❤️
At the end with the buoy rig an appropriate amount of weight on the other end of the rope to bring the buoy back up faster than by hand and easier. Pulley quality of course affects ease of of operation.
Line the chute with 1/16" LDPE sheet. Make the runout flatter at the bottom.
Totally agree. easy fix twice as fast and adjustable at bottom by leaving it long like a water slide
That would reduce friction and speed the bags, but I think the corners of rocks poking through the bags, as well as well the grit and dirt, would probably wear through the HDPE, then it would cause problems/need to be replaced. Also, it would speed up the bags, which is part of the current problem.
@@keithwood6459 flatten the transitions.
EXCELLENT SERIES! I can't stop watching. Efficiency ideas since you asked:
1) ORE: Ditch the bags and dump ore down the chutes right into another ore cart, using smooth pipe as others have said. You lift the ore once instead of 10 times.
2) Tracks: Take an angle grinder up and clean up the rails at the stope for easier rolling. On the 2x4 track corners that are sticking, maybe a router radius would help.
3) Headroom. Take a couple days and blast off those big headbanger rocks that protrude into the travel paths so your miners can move faster standing more upright.
4) Lighting. They make nice 200' strings of LED worklights that use hardly no power. You can have a solar power bank and/or a little generator sitting outside while you're working. This is for speed and for safety.
Better idea: You have an exit portal not very far above the working face? A ropeway for ore bags could handle the terrain and I think they are commonly used in the norhwest in logging. Gets rid of all the winding through the mountain. You could take the rope way down to the working face and use the energy from the big drop outside to make the small lift inside the mine.
I was thinking about the same thing… use the exit portal to get the much out. Some sort of tram system with high strength rope-or cable I know it’s a long way… but you have gravity on your side right into the truck.
Giant shop vac in the back of the truck! You can engineer from there!
You are looking for something like those auto-retracting hose reels. With a cable attached to a strong coil spring (clock spring) in the reel, the bags would slow down progressively until they reach the bottom, due too the coil compressing inside the reel, and after unhooking the bag the cable will retract automatically to receive the next bag above.
Also Jason ever been to the dry cleaners? What if you used a system similar to what they employ with a conveyor belt running along the mine roof. Hooks spaced far apart so no excessive load and possibly using steel wire turned by a motor. But theoretically you could have people loading bags directly from your stope and the conveyor could terminate directly in the loading area.
I would think some poly sheets creating a non-abrasive slide, and then at the bottom of the chute you have to decrease the angle so they slow down a little and don't explode at the bottom, 1 at a time is a huge bottleneck
Take plastic corrugated pipe from top to bottom with a hatch where the bags may get caught . If you use smooth pipe take miners dumping carts and just fill carts with no bags and fill carts directly. Dump cart directly into containers on bed of truck with ability to lift off with front end loader. Best of luck.
Awesome, thanks for taking me along on this adventure! Hard work always has its rewards!
After reading these comments , some people have great ideas! I like the idea of cart dumping into chute then landing into either hopper you can just pull lever to fill bags or another cart . Guess the easier you can make it the more you’re gonna get from it .
Ideas here - definitely make the 550 your standard hauler. Way more capacity. Put 4 steel bulk containers in it, devise a chute to drop the bags in from the portal porch, moving the chute or truck once a container is full. Feel like bag stacking is a major part of your handling time and not really necessary at the end, you can put a bulk container by the mill with a forklift and run bags out of that just as well as a pallet. On the drop i think you could probably link a few of those bouys up and use a counterweight to drop more weight each time, but safely. Maybe add some poly strips to the big sweeping corners to make cart pushing easier. Love this series and appreciate the share, much respect! I think your friend would be really proud of what you're doing there.
Drill some holes in the wall a few hundred feet apart and put some loop anchors in them. Put a winch on each cart and have the cart reel itself toward each anchor
lol i like it
Hey Jason! Pushing the karts on thoses rails is a lot of efforts. I suggest 2 things to improve the ride; the idea is to reduce friction. No need to be perfect, It will improve a lot with little efforts, then improve little with a lot of efforts !
1°) clean them 1 time with a steel wire brush on a portable angle grinder (no need to be perfect or spend a lot of time, just knock the rust on the top of the rails)
2°) the rails will get dirty no matter what (debris, small rocks, mud, etc...), add a brush/groom in front of the karts to clean the top of the rails as they go (just to remove small rocks/debris on the top of the rails)
3°) bonus, roughly brush grease on the rails after the wire brush cleaning.
Hope it helps, keep the hard work 😉😘
Jason think about a couple of eletric bike kits.
Use a chain drive in the cart with heavy duty rubber side out casters.
Even have it remotely controlled. With the right gearing it should help pull the carts the 500ft distance
That was an elegant solution with the bouy. Also your team members have a great attitude!
Jason, you are so blessed with a very rich mine. Not only that, but you are operating as safe as you can with the challenges that can change quickly. My hat is off to you and your mentor, Lane. I'm so sorry you lost a close friend. I can tell that you really appreciated the knowledge passed along from him. He sounded like an incredible person, just like you.
I like the idea of using the buoy bag for moving the ore from higher up. You mentioned the twists and turns in the chute and the problems associated with it. The control of the ore bag down the chute is the main problem it seems. If you ever want to try my suggestions to line the chutes with galvanized sheet metal, it will stop a lot of wear and tear on the bags making them reusable. However, controlling the speed of descent is a huge challenge as the bags will slide faster on a metal lined chute. Furthermore, you must also consider the safety issues that come with the long rope on the buoy. As shown, if any length of the rope becomes entangled around a foot or ankle, there will be a potentially serious medical situation located far away from help. Also to be taken into account is the amount of time you're spending on putting the ore in the buoy, sliding it down, taking it out, pulling the buoy up... You get my point. Think about how you can build something better than the buoy, to move your ore in that leg of the mine. It can be done to maximize time, money and safety. I have faith in you.
As far as getting from the blacksmith's shop on the truck bed, build a small shute that can be moved up out of the way or to the side. Extend it over the bed of the truck. You could hand slide one or two bags across it with minimal effort and drop them onto the pallets in the truck. This would speed up the process and save your back by not lifting/toting them as much. Kind of like an assembly line.. One person puts the ore on the 'chute' and slides it to the second. That person makes sure that the ore doesn't go too fast, but keeps moving. The third person is in the truck bed to make sure the ore is stacked safely. You could also trade out positions so that one person doesn't get worn out. Just an idea.
Thank you so very much, Jason! You are a remarkable miner and have the creative skill to solve problems! Sharing your mind with us is very appreciated! Blessings from Alabama ❤️
You asked for a suggestion on the long slide. To slow the bags down you need a gate that is perpendicular (runs across) the width of the slide. Hinge the gate so that when a bag hits it it pushes it open. But, use a spring hinge. The force of the bag coming down will hit the gate to open it so it can proceed further. The spring hinge will absorb a lot of the forward energy of the bag. Put the gate just a yard or so above the landing area so the bag slows down and then drops softly in the landing area. You can also add gates along the length of the slide in multiple places if needed which will make is to the bags slow down along the any without developing too much forward energy.
You should be taking a wet vac to that water ditch! I'll bet it'd be worth it.
The mucker truckers, round 14 ... I think it is awesome to see what the old timers went through; I hope the new timers strike it rich beyond their wildest dreams !
R.I.P Lane ... till we meet in heaven! 😇
Thanks for the positive attitude, Chad and Harry
I think the buoy is a great sled for the ore, my one suggestions in use much larger diameter pulleys, especially the one closest to your person pulling in the rope. It will make pulling SO much easier. Same with your casters, a larger diameter will make life mucho better.
Agreed on the caster diameter but I think they need to ditch the sand bags all together. Redesign the chute or just line it with sheet metal, make the carts on hinges so they dump into the chute and the chute empties right back into the next cart onto the lower level.
I'd be smiling all the way too!
I LIVE to mine!!!
9:52 Attach a second rope to the bouy that goes just above the work area and then down a side area with a counterweight to pull the empty bucket back up.
Ditch the bags. Get some belts from the shop. Load directly into a dump truck.
@@Michael-rg7mx Before it gets snowed in? They need a quick fix
agreed
Milwaukee battery right angle drill to spin a car rim to pull loaded carts with a rope. Easy to push an empty cart. Or a vac truck by the emergency exit to suck the muck.
@Jason @mbmmllc - your buoy idea is fun, but it’s still inefficient in terms of time and energy pulling it back up, so I have two different options which can be used in combination.
Solution 1 - Simply extend the end of the chute with a couple lower angle sections and the final being parallel to the ground. (Think a water slide transitioning into the pool of water at the end or how a bowling ball slows into the rack).
Solution 2 - Construct some archways over your chute and hang thick rubber (think industrial mud flaps), each flap will slow the bag of material but flex out of the way allowing it to pass. If you require more speed reduction, you can just add a mass on the backside (think slapping water versus moving your hand through it slowly).
agreed🙂
Add waist-high platforms at either end of the chute to load and catch the sacks. It'll save your backs and make it more efficient to load and unload the buoy
If loading with bags then sending down, use a loop of line such that one end will have the buoy thingy and the other a counter weight. That will help lift the empty buoy back up. Cylindrical rollers above the chute arranged in a “V” will guide rope back up with fewer hangups.
Bill, that's a great idea to ease the weight of the ore in the buoy And then getting it back up the chute to be filled again.
you would wanne have a bowe/dropfender at each end of the robe so you can drop one wit a bag and get the otherone back up from the weight of the one you drop. safes you energy
or another buoy at the other end, if they can pass each other, in the chute.
Two buoys if possible, with a braking system. Load one at the top and unload the lower one. They’re would be no lifting or effort really needed, other than loading and unloading the buoys.
Hi buddy if it was my operation , assuming I could find a good water supply I would high grade close to the ore face and pipe the tailings out as a slurry, by suspending the tailing pipe and attaching a few vibrators to it at critical points the muck should just flow . Ovcorce getting a couple of small crushers in there would be a challenge but compared to all that hand mucking? Adding a sluce out side the mine prayer to a tailings trench / pond would be worth considering but carrying jars of gold out and the rest running through a say 3”pipe has to be way more efficient than 400 bags. To be honest I haven’t tried doing this but in my home state of Tasmania ( I’m an Australian ) they moved high grade iron ore about 40 miles from the savage river mine to bolke tankers in a pipeline as a slurry. Love the show cheers
yess like in Malasia that was a that was a marvel
I should record my "work grind" for a few days so Jason & the guys can kick back and watch me work my butt off... This series is awesome!!!
There truly is somthing special about bringing somthing left for dead back to life. It's special to see these rails, transfers, hollages, doing their job once again. I also bring derylict engines and machinery back to life when i have spare time. The satisfaction, such a motivation. And visitors can spectate in awe
The two guys doing the hard work have an awesome demeanor. I'd love to work in this work environment! Haha
Watching this made me think of the 60's era movie "The Great Escape". Could you setup waypoints with electric winches along your haulageway? Pull the cart from waypoint to waypoint with the winch. Pull it back when it's unloaded. A simple eyebolt on each end of the cart and quick clips on the ends of the cables. Tough to do around corners, but for the long strait runs it might save a bunch of labor...Or mount a battery powered winch on each end of the cart. Mount the cable end to a fixed spot in the tunnel and walk behind the cart controlling winch. Can't wait for next season!
I enjoy watching what you guys do, keep up the good work.
Bigger wheels on your ore carts would definitely help 😁
11:25 Uggg. You have velocity, yet you're dropping the bag to the ground, only to have to pick it up. Look at some playground slides with runout. Make a 4' high table that the last shoot angles or curves onto instead of straight down. Then the bag has a chance to slow down on this table. NOW, the worker doesn't have to pick the bag off the ground, simply grab it from the table to set down to the cart.
My favorite playlist on YT right now.
I also think pool slides, curve play slides, or slip and slides would work well because it is so wet in there. Maybe put sides on the truck or even a truck made into a dump truck. To maybe get the bags into the dump bed or truck bed from your landing outside put a slide or a chute of some type on a swivel to load the bed right to left and be able to move up and down. I guess like a machine gun on a plane. That way you can move the truck when needed to fill it back to front. You may need to rest the slide on the truck bed slides to make it sturdy, but you might be able to freely move the slide where you need. Using curved slides inside the mine will keep the damage down on the sandbags. Swing set slides and pool slides come in so many different sizes and curves. With it being so wet they are made for it. Also, they are easy to get your hands on cheap or free. When you are out driving around look for old beat-up swing sets. Everyone with kids has had one or more. Just stop and ask. It is amazing how many people are tired of looking at it and mowing it. Many people just want them gone out of their yards. People refurbishing pools normally change the slides and just throw them away because they fade and look damaged. Probably take all the brackets and metal that comes with them. They are useful. Even the lightweight metal of old trampolines is sturdy and very handy. I have a dump truck and I use an old trampoline mat with the springs to cover my dump bed. The air flows through it. I get dome metal half circle wire holders I pull the mat tight and use the springs to lock to my bed. When done it just rolls up for storage in a box. I am female so I have to think very far outside the box. My Dad and Brother often look at me like I have lost my mind and make fun of me, but it really is funny how I catch them doing jobs my weird way. These are just some thoughts of how a female that is 5ft. would maybe be able to move rocks. Who knows if you could get enough different types and sizes of slides you may be able to get rid of the sandbags and just move the rock and muck to your truck just using the slides. I enjoy your videos. Thank you for all the info.
Handling ore bags is just like firewood, it’s a lot of work.
Nice job gentlemen!
Hard work brings riches! So getur Dun!!!!!
To all the friends we have all lost. We think of you often and miss the chance to share our wins and our mistakes. Much love
Jason: can you go out the escape portal that’s close to the face? Maybe use a cable or strong synthetic rope to get to the road. Watching your videos it seams the exit by the face wouldn’t be to far to the blacksmith shop or straight to a landing area on the road. I use a synthetic rope to lower my heavy dredge into deep canyon with two anchor points and a pulley. I think you could do it relatively inexpensive. But imo by far the fastest easiest way out and into the truck. The synthetic rope I use is 3/8” with a 12k lb rating. I would use those large totes… have a rope/cable anchored straight above the exit straight to a tree across the road. Have a pulley with a hook for the bag that rides the line. There’s other details but that’s the idea 🤷🏼♂️
Love the series thanks for the great content, sorry for your loss btw. Get a stronger rope make 5 + knots, space them out, have buoy on ever knot and let 5+ down in a row. For the carts i would use a system out of snatch block pulley and rope where you just have to handle the rope per hand or with a Winch, ofc you guys need to improve the tracks and the shoot, but that would make your guys life way easier in my opinion.
Sorry for your loss Jason. ❤️
There is a reason the old timers used slick plates, ore carts that dump, and ore chutes with gates on them.
I like your pulley system but if you raised the top pulley positioning higher and daisy chained a few buoys together it would certain raise the total bandwidth.
For your ore cars: consider using a cable system with winches, cable and cable guides. You might be able to use bigger ore cars.
I was thinking the same but with a cable and a harness for the front so 2 people can move a larger load on 1 cart but for the metal rail I can see the winch idea working or have multiple carts that can easily attach/detach to each other so the winch doesn't need to pull so far, basically having a train
Get some steel tubing, a welder and a tubing bender. Make yourself a sandbag slide, use gravity to pull down the ore. Think of it like a spiral staircase. I'll even draw you up a blueprint of the design that I believe would meet your needs.
agreed like a mountain trolly
Wouldn't there be less repeative handling if you drilled & blasted from the opposite end of the drift you just started? Remember, the more you let the ore drop & fall against itself, the less you have to crush & mill. Think enclosed chutes & collection boxes. I remember a 1/4 mi. chute at the Cochise Stronghold of Arizona that dropped 600-800 ft.
Forgot to say, Great fricking job Jason and Mine Operator! Your hard work makes my day...
Outstanding vid. Mining is good old fashioned hard work. Watching you guys get it done is a blast. We get to learn things that many of us will never be able to do. Thank you gents.
Jason, at the buoy drop, get a small dock cleat to tie off the rope when you pull the buoy up, just a couple flipped half-hitches over the prongs is all you'd need. Much safer than standing on a rope to hold it against a weight. Can't wait to see the crush and shake.
This is a great venture Jason , hope it keeps you as excited and happy long into your future years sir .
✌️
You might want to place a small boom crane on the outside of the mine portal, just to pick the bags and set them in the truck bed..Also get some fork lift pallets probably plastic is stronger, and more durable.
Loving these videos. So informative and you guys did so much hard work. Hope it really pays off for you guys in the end. Can't wait for the next one 😃👍🇨🇦
Jason, Lots of good ideas below but let me give you one. You live in the Bellingham area. Lots of people commercially and recreationally crab fish in your area, and most save their backs and legs (after suffering from hand pulling 50# pots) by using electric capstan drive gurdies. I'm quite sure you can find one or two used ones at reasonable prices. Hook them up with a good gen set, set an open face block or two at appropriate places and mount the capstans so that it can be moved to various places in your mine and let it do the hard work of pulling carts, lowering and retrieving bags etc. Much easier to push buttons and reset lines in different open sided blocks at various bends in the shafts (if needed) than using you back. A chute from the end of your mine headframe platform to your truck also makes sense; a wider chute that you can put ten bags on a small pallet and back down the chute again with the capstan. Good off season project to play with. Great video series! Good luck and swamp out all the gold fines on bedrock before you move away from mucking an area....get it all!
Such an awesome documentation. The hard work will pay off for sure.
Hey Jason! Loading your truck with all those sacks was very impressive. Keep up the hard work. I like watching people work too, lol. Thanks
i thought you would have done this by now: in the chute put two buoys on either end of the rope, the loaded one will make the empty one come up by itself. much faster, but there are risks of tangling the whole thing.
also pad the bottom of the buoys to dissipate the energy.
I was thinking the same thing.
Yep, this was also my thought. Pulling back from rope takes time and strenght alot compared to one or 2 tangle solving
there is not enough room in the chute to have the two buoys pass each other.
@@TacoMaster3211the heavier one would likely bump the empty one out of the way was my thinking, but you might be right.
Never knew Gold had a season. I am always going for the gold. Thanks Jason, can't wait for the shop process.
Well am sure mining would be hard in the winter
Love this series! Can't wait for the next videos!
Can't wait to see how much GOLD you got out of this season.
It was cool to see Mine operator working with you. Realy enjoy your vidios
👍👏 top effort guys.. I'm excited to see some of the slabs
Thanks for living the dream for the rest of us Jason! Someday I'll have my own claim.
I apologize, this will probably be a little long winded and it may not work the way I see it in my head. Instead of mucking into sand bags at the working face, I would attach wheel barrows without the legs or wheel to the carts using the Adel as the attachment point so that it can still dump. Run the track to the chute so that you can dump the ore down the chute. Line the track up at the bottom of the chute so that the cart below can catch it was it comes down. Wait to bag it until you're at the portal of the mine.
Sorry to hear about your friend.
This is absolutely incredible Jason. Talk about earning your dollar! 😮 every cent is well deserved 😊
Shute ideas: Fabric or carpet chunks to scrub speed in fast spots? Gymnastics mats on the walls in the twisty bits? This is definitely your biggest bottleneck, as long as it takes 2 people to do this operation it will be hurting efficiency. Love the progress!
22:48 As a Millwright, I have installed and serviced millions of feet of conveyors of ALL types. It's a fairly simple matter to setup narrow belt variable speed conveyors to move those bags out of the mine.
Figure just ball park $70 to $100 a foot maybe half that if you scrounge used stuff. Put a drive motor every 10 to 20 feet and a BIG generator!!
How did the previous mine operator blast and get all those huge rocks lining along the tracks? But, you end up with tiny stuff. Will you be making larger rocks soon?
I think those big chunks are just host rock and it breaks up bigger and the quarts vein shatters up smaller. I am guessing that because those big chunks were left behind and have no value while the small chunks of gold bearing quarts are always removed.And Jason has just been blasting quarts vein.
He drills 5 times too many holes. Packed with enough for a 12 foot bit but only in a 2 foot hole.
The more powder you use the finer the muck produced. The large rocks you see are the host rock they had to remove to make the shaft large enough to work in. Jason spoke of doing the same thing to achieve a taller working height to the mine.
A verticle paddle wheel where the paddles hold the ore bags on the way down and collapse on the way up to save space. Multiple dc motors and Libatts for power to partially automate the carts, especially that 550 ft run (maybe add rc type control so no one has to walk it... depends on budget and pain levels 😂
I would definitely automate whatever you can to reduce the repetitive walks, climbs and lifting... conveyor belt to bring raw materials to the chute then bag as it falls is another option. Good luck!
Instead of bagging, how about dump carts and ore shutes, and an ore bin at the bottom? Really enjoying your development of your new, old mine. Can't wait to see the values when you process the ore!
Short answer to why this can't happen anytime in the next season, that would cost too much money.
I can appreciate all of your hard work @ 6 yrs. Old I was in old mining shafts in No. Idaho, that had no human entrance for 100 yrs. Plus. I went on to attend college and enter the mining industry. I was @ Sonora/Jamestown, CA. The very day an 86 lb. nugget of gold blocked and came down the conveyor belt. The old sixteen to one mine.
Try rubber flaps alternating down the chute so they slow the bag before it hits the bottom. Old tires may work, if you cut the side wall and leave the tread at the end you have a easy attachment point.
Would be awesome to see less human touches of those sand bags from cart to cart. Depending how long it is going to take to get the re-routing done (drilling/blasting/mucking etc.) to shorten the ore haulage route it would be awesome to see it go from cart to cart with little/no human touches. There is a good amount of energy created when those bags go down the longer ore chute---great opportunity to use that energy to move something up the same time something goes down...or move something laterally when something goes down, experiment with a looped rope that brings full buoys down and empty ones up.
Also, thinking if you made those pallets custom into a pallet bin with nice heavy duty sides and a lid, that way you wouldn't have to stack them by hand, could find a way to let gravity/something mechanical to drop them into each bin. You would still have the pallet underneath to move with a forklift, etc. and even if a bag exploded getting dumped in your precious ore wouldn't spill anywhere. It would be contained in your pallet bin.
In general finding a way to remove the sand bag system entirely would be huge for you guys!
Looking forward to seeing some of this crushed and milled! Keep it up! I am a bit jealous, would love to own my own mine someday. Great series so far! :)
Hi Jason, I had mentioned before about getting some metal roller planks. Unloading trucks. The planks are about 16 inches wide, Rollers. We would throw shaving bags or grain on them, then push them down onto the pallets or with rocks on your bed of truck. Works great.
You need a counterweight of about half the weight of a bag. That will slow them down on the way down, and bring the buoy back up when it is empty.
counter weight in a pipe with a valve for an air shock like sys
I cant wait to see you process that ore. LETS GO!!!
Lane would be proud of you....great Job❤
my idea would be to rebuild the bottom of the chute so it plains out to flat like a kids playground slide so it don't end with that drop... the rope and pulley seems to be a total pain.. so that's what I would do.. re engineer something at the bottom like waterslides have to eat up the momentum and somehow slide smothly and come to rest as horizontally as possible..
maybe like a table catch.. then you don't have to bend over to pick them up either.. just slide them off the table to cart.
(edit) you built that in a hurry... nothing wrong with retooling things that aren't working efficiently.
agreed were on the same page
At the end of the chute, you could use more and bigger tyres. Don't lay them flat on the ground but put them in upside position as you would roll them up the chute. Put a rope or two through the tyres to fix them in position. Pull them down to the ground so that the can give way, at the impact. Easy solution and much better dampening as the bags are stopped over a longer distance than in your solution.
Thanks for your videos and good luck from Switzerland!
You guys are rockin' it! Sorry for the loss of your friend and mentor.
RIP to your friend! Great work guys
Also, at the end, you should be unloading your bags from the track onto the pallet they will sit on in the truck. What you need is a lifter that can then move the loaded pallet down onto the truck. You won't be able to do that by hand, but you might be able to do it by pushing a few buttons or moving a few levers. I would try an overhead beam of some kind that extends out and then over to where the truck is parked. Keep the beam level. The beam has to be strong enough to support your loads, and transport them along its length. You could even use a piece of metal rail over a wooden beam, if you had to. Just over-engineer it, so that it can handle way more than you think it will ever have to. Then you can figure out a mechanical way to drive the lifted pallet along the rail. You could be drinking a beer and doing it, as a way of doing a victory dance.
What a work out! You guys are really building muscles. Can’t wait to see how much gold you get out of all that muck.
Just build your chute with a less abrasive material for starters, or just staple in some thick plactic sheeting if you dont want to replace the whole thing, then level the descent at the bottom to slow the bags down a bit and like someone else said raise the end of the shoot so its at the same height as the cart... that being said, and im sure youre already thinking about this, if you had some carts that pivot up and dump into a chute, and that chute empty right back into another cart, that would be the way to go. Cut the sands bags out of the equation all together Awesome stuff guys, keep up the hard work and can't WAIT FOR NEXT SEASON!
Side boards on the truck, stakes out. Big heavy canvas tarp inside the bed sides on the 550, toss the bags off the platform into the truck and drag the bags all out when you get to the mill
can you take some blue plastic barrels, cut them in half making a half pipe of each, then attach them together making a longer half pipe??? those would be much slicker and easier for the bags to slide down....then closer to the bottom you need to make a better angle so its not coming down so fast and make a nicer padded area for the bags so they no longer break open...this way you can get rid of the rope and just put the bags down the barrel half pipe to the bottom, bags wont break......you also need to make better carts or rail system to transport the bags to the shoot/half pipe to the bottom........hope this helps and gives ya some good ideas to work with.
i like it a lott
You can use a counterweight to slow the bag going down the chute by creating some resistance/tension on the line. Another really simple way to do it is fill the chute bag after bag. So for example you might have 20 bags butting up against each other from the bottom of the chute to the top. Just take 1 bag from bottom, the stack moves down freeing space for 1 more at the top. Take one, add one, take one, add one. The bags will never fall more than 1 bag length.
OK Jason. Here is an idea for removing the bags without breaking them. Cut off about 4 feet off the bottom of the ramp and create a table instead at about waist height. Let the bags come down t full speed and slow down on the horizontal table. Make the table along the wall for say 10 or 15 feet and add carpet on top for friction and not destroy the bags. Have the guy at bottom of the chute grab the bags off the table at waist height and put onto the carts. Any time you're not bending over and picking up from the ground is a good thing.
Another idea for a chute versus straight chunks of wood. Guys in construction doing demolition use these garbage cans that are chained together, think about this idea snaking it's way down the raise creating a twisting chute that allows for debris to slide down easily without getting stuck, should work with bags. Have this come onto the table as well for easy moving to the cart.
Good luck.