Spec of that rig is good for NQ core to 900m at around 35m per shift. So 10 to 12 days for a 500m hole would be expected especially in soft limestones and shales.

really? wouldn't have thought it had the torque to restart the weight of 900m of rods let alone lift em back out of the hole. Worked with my dad for a few years, the Edeco rig was 3 times that size and he had wouldn't have had a hope in hell of working to 500m let alone 900!

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We use similar rigs in Colombia and regularly hit 1000m holes with them using NQTW (thin wall) rods. Would not be an issue for this type of rig.

We use similar rigs in Colombia and regularly hit 1000m holes with them using NQTW (thin wall) rods. Would not be an issue for this type of rig.

Minco are sending three people to a Village Meeting at Nenthead on 26th November at 7.30pm in the Village Hall. We are invited to attend and ask questions.

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Is any one from here going to the meeting ?

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I'm planning to, being on the committee of NMCS & spending a fair amount of time in the mines it would be silly not to... 😉

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I'm planning to, being on the committee of NMCS & spending a fair amount of time in the mines it would be silly not to... ;)

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If it had been on a Friday night I would have been their,have a interesting meeting Gavin

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Any news of their plans ???

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They didn’t really tell us anything more than you could have already guessed. They’ve not even finished one bore hole yet so they don’t really know what they’re going to find....if anything! They are planning on drilling a couple more close by. I think one was on the opposite site of the road to were they are currently drilling and the other was going to be over roughside area.
If it goes ahead the drift will need to be 6kms in length to get down to the depth they need. This would put the mine entrance a reasonable distance away from the village. They will be looking into ex-industrial sites for processing the ore and will need to consider infrastructures for transport etc.
Maybe the mine entrance could be situated near Allenheads or Cowshill in Weardale. Or possibly in closer proximity to Nent at Carr Sheilds due to the decrease in altitude compared to Nent!
Whatever the case if found to be successful it will be a good number of years yet before Nenthead has a working mine again.

I spoke to a Alston resident tonight about jobs in the area and they said that things would be alright now that they were getting a new mine in the area! I think some people are getting a bit ahead of themselves at the moment. As burrower says they are basically just testing a theory at the moment.

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I am willing to buy a round of ale when the first ore is sold.

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I think some people are getting a bit ahead of themselves at the moment.

Perhaps, but I might email Minco to get myself on the first tour of this 6km adit. 😉

Burrower pretty well sums up what the situation is.
The first bore was about 340m down at the time and was looking as expected. They should be in the target area by now but there are several more bores to be done and no guarantees that the ore-body that the geologists think is likely to be there actually is.

The MINCO guys made a lot about how the opinions of the locals is very important as to how or if they carried out their operations and also about local jobs. Not that there are loads of miners around but the time required for sinking the decline would be plenty to get people trained up. If their contribution had been all Powerpoint and slick I would have been decidedly dubious but they came over as real people, which is nice.
They were very careful to say that everything is conjecture at the moment and while it is nice to think of what might happen, even if everything comes up trumps it will be at least 5 years before a mine is up and running.

The mine operation, should it happen, is likely to have a relatively low impact on the neighbourhood. The mine surface site is likely to consist of a medium supermarket sized shed and an entrance. Where possible deads, such as from the decline sinking, would be sold as road fill and it was expected that mill tailings would be concreted and used to backfill the mine workings. So dig chamber 1, leave a pillar, dig chamber 2, backfill chamber 1 with concreted waste and so on.

Talking to the geologist they are keen not to come into contact with the existing mines so are drilling to intersect the veins at ~400m IIRC which is well clear of the existing workings and they are too far East to be likely to hit any of the crosscuts.

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Thanks for passing on this info guys. It's nice to know that Minco are being open and upfront about their operations. Is there any way of getting to know the success or otherwise of these test bores as I'm sure there are many people who would like to know what may (or may not) happen in the future?

I think they will be posting up positive info on their website but this is unlikely to be anything like an in-progress report.
I'll ask the geologist if he would be prepared to let us know of intermediate info but given this is commercial I can guess what the answer will be!

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Point taken. But it would be nice to know whether they have found what they hoped to and whether they intend to go ahead with extraction.

At the last AONB Geopark advisory group meeting that I attended it was explained that this is just the first of several rounds of exploratory drilling. Only if the results of these initial core drillings are favourable will there be more exploratory cores drilled, and if still favourable then even more exploration.
There are lots of 'ifs' here and several years of increasing exploration which could be halted if they do not find what their modelling predicts. I can confirm it sounded as if we are many years away from a possible mining operation.

Interesting stuff and I can certainly see the rationale behind the exploration model i.e. that the lowest and thickest limestone in the sequence stands a good chance of being the most highly mineralised. Looking forward to a trip round the mine, if they get to that point 🙂

There is mineralisation in the Melmerby Scar Limestone in the central part of the NPO. It was seen in Allenheads BH No 1 as per the following quote from The Friends of Killhope Newsletter No 79 p 17 (Feb 2012).

"Because Allenheads No. 1 was located on a possible shaft site it was started well away from Allenheads Old Vein and above the Tyne Bottom Limestone it only intersected minor amounts of mineralisation including traces of fluorite, calcite, dolomite, ankerite, galena, sphalerite, pyrite and chalcopyrite. However, the Old Vein hades north, and it was eventually intersected in and below the Tyne Bottom Limestone where the lower limestones in particular became more and more fractured, ankeritised and silicified until ultimately in a 30 m (98 ft) section in the Robinson and Melmerby Scar Limestones the alteration became so extensive that the original lithology was often obscured. This zone was characterized by the marked absence of any sulphides but clearly had been the site of the passage of strong mineralizing solutions. As far as I know, this section of the core has never been the subject of modern scientific analysis."

The core is still with the BGS in their Core Store at Keyworth. Perhaps someone should look at it!

Dave Greenwood

http://www.cwherald.com/news/stories/nenthead-boreholes-work-extended-to-march-20121211401485.htm 

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Jesus, reading that lot - no wonder the UK hardly has a mining industry. Have CCC forgot that the site once had mining going on it?

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