GGPChat

Decline advance upto 21st July did 111m averaging 3.25m per day
Period from then to 31st Aug averaged 4.75m per day
Start at 3.25 to average 4.75 would need 6.25 per day at 31st Aug.

Till 8th Oct at 6.25 x 38 days = 237.5m + 685m = 922.5m

2,600m total - 922.5m = 1,677.5m divided 6.25m = 268.4 days
Finish 30th June

6.25m could be the low figure for the period, I’m expecting 8m per day
8m per day would finish end April

There is also 900m of ancillary shafts and drives, I would expect these to be completed by additional gangs/rigs

This is only the exploration decline works.
Additional production decline works to be announced in new mining plan with FS for the 3mtpa operation

End of Aug 685m
922.5m must be in to the second spiral by now

Byrnecut still only have 1 jumbo at the moment drilling for bolts and explosives.
It had to leave the face while exploding, clearing and scarifying operations are on going .

This idle time now could be on the second face on the slide where I’ve marked “1”.
This side drive goes to the vent hole that was installed recently.
This is an important project to get ventilation down to the work faces and also opens up the position for the second vent.
That second side drive must also be close now, once that drive is in the raise boring machine can drill that second vent hole bottom upwards.
Good ventilation and additional means of escape are really important at these depths

What happens when the decline gets to the ore body?
Quick answer-
It doesn’t.

If you listened to my 3rd podcast with Liam I took you on a virtual ride down the Decline to the ore face. You would have heard me say the Decline is now leaving us to the right to start it’s long descent downwards around the lower spiral.
What we have in front of us now is an access drive, about 100m and we are at the face.
We are at about 450m deep on top of the ore we are standing on it but to the left is an ore face a 20m or so step up in high grade ore.
This drive doesn’t stop there it carries on into the ore body central zone above the northern corridor, with cross cuts either side.
I believe these to be used for drilling as there’s only weak ore here and the rock removed will go to the waste dump.
Heading back out passed the ore upto the lower 4th spiral there is a side drive to the left or east, so turn here.
I believe this to be a ventilation drive and constructed at the same time as the main drive.
It goes down steeply to the first stoping level at about 520m from surface and May reach the ore before the access drive from the decline gets there.
This 70m depth has a decline length of about 500m

3rd podcast
https://ggphelp.co.uk/brew-with-bottle-3-2/

I reposted this podcast from last year, sorry to confuse folk.
When we get time Liam wants to do another one.

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My take from it is they knew there was something special down there. Let’s Gets down there but in the meantime let’s define this as we go. As things are progressing they are suddenly realising, this thing is a monster and we really need to rethink this. What a bad position to be in. There is just to much gold. Let’s just fill the hole back in and forget about it.

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Bamps - Thanks for this.
I'm guessing that this causes all sorts of problems for the mine planners.

1. You don't want to be building the decline through the ore body so you need to find the edges before you can determine where the decline is to go.
2. You want to locate the crusher at the bottom of the orebody but you need to find the bottom of the orebody first.

Finding edges and bottoms from the surface is very time consuming and expensive. So what to do?

They will clearly need to define a known scope/cutoff for Phase 1 to include in the FS (I suspect it will be somewhat larger than was in the PFS) but they will need to include in the FS a "hook/plan" on how they will expand into Phase 2/3/4 etc.
As you indicate, it will surely include some form of fan drilling from the bottom of phase 1 so that they can then determine MRE for phase 2 then PFS and FS for phase 2. Rinse and repeat for phase 3 and 4.
But how do you remove the infrastructure that has been built for phase 1 when mining phase 2 - do you simply retire it and allow it to fall with the rest of the orebody?

At my age, I suspect that I will never realise the full extent of the orebody as each phase will likely take multiple years to gestate.

Any thoughts on this "nice" conundrum.
ATB RA.

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Makes you wonder why they think they need that drilling beast...?

Didn't Shaun once say, words to the effect that the thinking is they could chase the SE crescent down to the 'centre of the Earth'...

Ie greater than 2000m depth.

Guess we soon find out what's at 2500m to 3500m

A lot more gold, I expect, is the geo-statistical probability.

Hi All. Merry Christmas to you all. With a mine that deep maybe a mining robot for SDs stocking. ATB Speedy

Hi Bamps,
You are one of the few that makes good use of the 3D mining plan proposal published by GGP.
Lots of recent chat about decline distance.
Do you think this is of any value? It uses the map as accurately as I could, but of course we don't know the order of priority of main tunnel vs passing bays and additional horizontal drives (especially as we get further down).
Is this close to where you imagine we are.
Personally I am happy to wait until reported, but 'fun' to visualise the progress.

Hi Fox In The Box. Great piece of work. I'll let Bamps make his comments on your calcs but could you please explain the "extras" which you have added. I'm guessing that these include the 20m spurs plus some of the straighter bits in the spirals. It would be useful just to better understand the 120M and 150M calcs. Nicely presented too.
Thanks - RA

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