Been working very hard recently in what remains of B floor on the western side of the old vein. All severed levels of course now, the chambers having been driven up and through from below for most of it. Almost every section of it has been cut off and inaccessible, but not any more, we can get to them all now.

The slate is exceptional, every block I break up turns into cubes. It's like playing Minecraft.

Anyway one thing that has startled me about the old B floor is the absolute straightness. In fact it is the straightest drive I've ever seen in any slate mine anywhere.

My colleague was working at the extreme western end yesterday, but I was working close to the stairs. I could see him clearly, despite the great distance. I turned my light off and it was remarkable, I've never been able to see so far in one continuous direction underground before. Except perhaps in the limestone chambers off the Milwr Tunnel.

Just thought I'd put it up as a point of interest. It's straight as a laser.

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That's great. Just goes to show what could be done when the rock etc. was favourable!

Keep up the good work.:flowers:

Grahami

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:thumbup:


Out of interest, Miles, how many chambers are you looking across there?

(Don't have book or plan to hand at the moment.)

I remember looking down into chamber 2 west old vein from floor B and going down to C and encountering another immense chamber to the west, which I thought was the same one ( although there was no sign of the others in the group who had braved the abseil and whom I had expected to see)

:blink:

I thought then an awful lot of rock had come out, indicating its quality. They certainly look more developed than those to the east of the OV incline

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:thumbup:


Out of interest, Miles, how many chambers are you looking across there?

about 6-7 plus their walls.

Yes the OV rock was better slate for splitting, I think BV was mostly slab from what I know. Working with the rock does certainly support this as OV rock breaks apart into quite thin sheets but I've never seen the BV rock do that in the same way. I will say though that the OV rock is "small" at the B horizon, in that it breaks away in reasonably small chunks and I think the rockmen would have struggled to obtain the larger slates from it. Further down it seems better, with the chunks larger between the faults/bevels.

There is certainly bad rock too though.

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