Mark Denning
My house has been overrun by women and I am well out numbered so there is only one thing to do... run away. So White Pit digging it is then.
The task at hand is to enlarge the space at the dig face because its tighter than a nuns c**t. I have decided that the way to do this is to take out the loose looking small boulder from the right hand wall. This will in turn free up the large boulder which the open water worn hole is disappearing under.
Armed with the 110v drill I got stuck in. At first I thought this would be a fairly quick task athough I should have known from my optimism that this would not be the case. I removed the stal and small rocks from around the top and two sides, inserted two chisels and beat the hell out of it. Not a twitch, this thing was still stuck fast so I started to loosen up the underside at which point I found out why it didn't move. It didn't stop where I thought it did, it's bloody huge.
Now, me being a little stubborn all this means is I had to hit it a little harder. After 6 hours underground I filled up several more bags, got the massive boulder out of the wall, moved it as far as I could (about 4 feet), created a huge pile of spoil at the end and got beaten out of the dig by the bad air which was by now getting pretty bad.
Mark Denning 6hrs digging
Tuesday 18 October 2011
Whitepit 12 oct 2011
Stu Gardiner,Mark Denning and Henry Dawson
After a few weeks of good digging and many loads of spoil removed from the dig face it has now gotten to the point where getting out of the dig is in its self a challenge. The time has come to do a hauling session and break up the huge boulders that we can't remove because they're just too damn heavy.
Stu and myself went down first and carried on poking the hole in the bottom until Henry showed up. Then the 3 of us hauled out all the bags of spoil and several large boulders that didn't really fit in the skip but Stu assured me that balancing 20 kilo rocks on top of and partly inside of the skip was as safe as house's.
Henry now carried on digging whilst Stu and myself broke up the remaining really big boulders using the two chisel method ie. drill two 14mm holes side by side make them into a slot, insert both chisel's and hit as hard as you can. The results are pretty impressive, 300-400mm thick boulders split neatly straight down the middle.
Once all the boulders were in manageable chunks we hauled them up to the middle point, gave up and called pub time. All in all a very successful evenings work.
2.5 hrs in dig ish
After a few weeks of good digging and many loads of spoil removed from the dig face it has now gotten to the point where getting out of the dig is in its self a challenge. The time has come to do a hauling session and break up the huge boulders that we can't remove because they're just too damn heavy.
Stu and myself went down first and carried on poking the hole in the bottom until Henry showed up. Then the 3 of us hauled out all the bags of spoil and several large boulders that didn't really fit in the skip but Stu assured me that balancing 20 kilo rocks on top of and partly inside of the skip was as safe as house's.
Henry now carried on digging whilst Stu and myself broke up the remaining really big boulders using the two chisel method ie. drill two 14mm holes side by side make them into a slot, insert both chisel's and hit as hard as you can. The results are pretty impressive, 300-400mm thick boulders split neatly straight down the middle.
Once all the boulders were in manageable chunks we hauled them up to the middle point, gave up and called pub time. All in all a very successful evenings work.
2.5 hrs in dig ish
Saturday 8 October 2011
Whitepit - 08/10/11
Mark Denning & Stu Gardiner
Phase 1 was to remove the extremely large boulder that was concealing what seemed like a water worn rift below, on the previous visit Mike was unable to even move it. Stu set about chiselling away any stal using the 110v drill from around the edges. The plan was to try and break it into 2 manageable sections so 6x 10mm 500mm deep shot holes were drill through the boulder, the were enlarged with a 14mm short drill bit to allow the chisels to be set in, after a few minutes of whacking the chisels the boulder cracked in 2 allowing the 2 sections to be removed from the dig face.
The way on seemed to again be straight down in the floor, however a small void under what seemed to be a solid wall gave the impression that it may well go horizontally.
Mark went in to investigate the wall, he then came to the conclusion that the wall was in fact another very large boulder/s that was agian staled in place, he set about removing the stal with the drill until it was exposed enough to attack.
Stu then adopted the shot hole approach in an attempt to remove the top of the boulder that was wedged fast against the roof, this would hopefully free up the boulder enough to crack it in half with another set of shot holes - this was all carried out seamlessly. Stu went up top to recover from mild C02 poisoning whilst Mark removed the 2 sections of boulder.
The removal of the boulder revealed around 3ft of open passage beyond, this was dug down in awkward conditions and again another void was located at the base of a scollped wall with white stal present.
The floor is very loose and the way on is straight down.
The dig is totally stacked out with filled bags and many large boulders that will need to be removed ASAP.
We were finally beaten and forced to retreat due to high levels of C02 - a pint in the Queen Vic soon aided recovery.
Thoughts on the high C02 is that we spent nearly 4 hours on Wednesday working hard on the boulders and then 48 hours later another 4 hours working equally as hard, this coupled with the decreased space due to the filled bags and boulders would have reduced the flow 02.
Total time underground: 4 hours.
Phase 1 was to remove the extremely large boulder that was concealing what seemed like a water worn rift below, on the previous visit Mike was unable to even move it. Stu set about chiselling away any stal using the 110v drill from around the edges. The plan was to try and break it into 2 manageable sections so 6x 10mm 500mm deep shot holes were drill through the boulder, the were enlarged with a 14mm short drill bit to allow the chisels to be set in, after a few minutes of whacking the chisels the boulder cracked in 2 allowing the 2 sections to be removed from the dig face.
The way on seemed to again be straight down in the floor, however a small void under what seemed to be a solid wall gave the impression that it may well go horizontally.
Mark went in to investigate the wall, he then came to the conclusion that the wall was in fact another very large boulder/s that was agian staled in place, he set about removing the stal with the drill until it was exposed enough to attack.
Stu then adopted the shot hole approach in an attempt to remove the top of the boulder that was wedged fast against the roof, this would hopefully free up the boulder enough to crack it in half with another set of shot holes - this was all carried out seamlessly. Stu went up top to recover from mild C02 poisoning whilst Mark removed the 2 sections of boulder.
The removal of the boulder revealed around 3ft of open passage beyond, this was dug down in awkward conditions and again another void was located at the base of a scollped wall with white stal present.
The floor is very loose and the way on is straight down.
The dig is totally stacked out with filled bags and many large boulders that will need to be removed ASAP.
We were finally beaten and forced to retreat due to high levels of C02 - a pint in the Queen Vic soon aided recovery.
Thoughts on the high C02 is that we spent nearly 4 hours on Wednesday working hard on the boulders and then 48 hours later another 4 hours working equally as hard, this coupled with the decreased space due to the filled bags and boulders would have reduced the flow 02.
Total time underground: 4 hours.
Wednesday 5 October 2011
Whitepit - 05/06/11
Mark Denning, Stu Gardiner & Mike Moxon.
Another good session with the generator and 110v drill, the large (massive) boulder was considerably reduced and most sides exposed.
It is thought that one more session will see it moved enough to break it up and then remove from the dig face.
Hopefully the way on is downwards and it 'should' be relatively comfortable digging.
Total time underground: 3 hours
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Another good session with the generator and 110v drill, the large (massive) boulder was considerably reduced and most sides exposed.
It is thought that one more session will see it moved enough to break it up and then remove from the dig face.
Hopefully the way on is downwards and it 'should' be relatively comfortable digging.
Total time underground: 3 hours
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Sunday 2 October 2011
Whitepit - 28/09/11
Stu Gardiner, Mark Denning, Estelle Sandford, Mike Moxon.
Mark went down early with the generator and drill and managed to take off the large flake of rock that was barring access to the floor below.
After this was removed from the dig Stu started to remove the floor and exposed a water worn clean washed (small) rift leading off and continuing downwards, this was blocked with small rocks and debris from our previous digging above. A large staled boulder will need to be broken up using wedges before we can carry on, this will hopefully make the digging reasonably comfortable.
A hauling session will be needed soon as the dig is filling up fast, air was good although very dusty dye to the excessive drilling and chiseling.
Total time underground: 3 hours
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Mark went down early with the generator and drill and managed to take off the large flake of rock that was barring access to the floor below.
After this was removed from the dig Stu started to remove the floor and exposed a water worn clean washed (small) rift leading off and continuing downwards, this was blocked with small rocks and debris from our previous digging above. A large staled boulder will need to be broken up using wedges before we can carry on, this will hopefully make the digging reasonably comfortable.
A hauling session will be needed soon as the dig is filling up fast, air was good although very dusty dye to the excessive drilling and chiseling.
Total time underground: 3 hours
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)