nme is not good only cause of management!, page-11

A good post, talentless. I HAVE mentioned before that your nic is a misnomer?
You raise some pretty fair points that I had not touched on, really......My reply to you was on the assumption we were debating only the physical features of the pit, lol.

1. The hardness of the pit material. Yes, was told it would be drill & blast, and that a contractor would be used to circumvent licensing & insurance probs/delays on this aspect.
But after I left the site, I wondered how hard it really was?
I was there after rain, and the Admiral had water, the Butterfly was dry....the water had soaked in..???

2. I have no knowledge of the specific controls, but we did discuss some grade control methods we had used in the past.

3. Not really a problem. You drill out the pit floor to the depth of several intended flitches (of, say 2.5m each). You then draw up a cross section of the assay values/m from the drilling. From these cross sections, you adjust the actual flitch depth so as to maximise ore capture/ minimise dilution, if you see what I mean. Dilution, loss of gold can result from inflexibility with flitch depths. Also, I would drill the whole floor, as sometimes very rich & unexpected gold can occur in supergene mode in virtually mud in "cracks" on contacts with chert or other medium.

4. Ok, you dont want to blow the ore sky high. Lower the density of your anfo by mixing it with bean-bag material, only charge the bottom of the hole and stem it so as to leave the surface virtually intact.You dont need to lift it right out. The dozer ripper should then handle it (the surface crust, that is).Grade & mark out the ore zones with marker paint for the excavator, and when he's finished & all ore is gone, quickly remove the rest of the pit floor down to the level of the next flitch with a couple of scrapers.
Then you start again. And you have a smaller excavator bucket available for narrow gold zones.

5. Valid point. The old workings will become known through the grade control drilling and voids are plotted on the cross sections.

6. one would have to see just how hard it really is once mining starts, but a good powder monkey should sort it out.

7. Why not mine at night? They have very good pit lighting available these days? But 12 hr day shifts should suffice otherwise you have to have double the work force....also costly.

8. I guess the only way to establish the grade is from the results of the grade control drilling as plotted on the cross sections. You then have an idea of volume @ x grade.
You cant get it 100% right, but you can try.

GZ