Sorry to drag up an old thread but your comments got me thinking - assuming a very large orebody but gold hosted within thin high grade quartz veins swarms in a sub-horizontal set within the large barren block of Tonalite.
Mining solutions could be block cave but that would be high capital cost and moving a lot of waste for a small amount of high grade ore.
More imaginative solutions may be bulk mining block cave and then underground crusher and then some sort of ore sorting machine so you only hoist/truck quartz vein ore to the surface? In that case what do you do with all the crushed Tonalite waste?
What about room and pillar with tunnel boring machines and then a ore sorter running behind that? Similar problems with what to do with the waste rock I guess.
The host tonalite looks very competent which is good for ground conditions but also very hard - which will be high on wear for mining machinery and any crusher circuit.
What a weird selective mining puzzle for the mine engineers to work out.
Sorry to drag up an old thread but your comments got me thinking...
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