rios

Its timbered up now, the shaft. We did it just before the rains started, and they have started. Access to the mine when it rains is limited. But we are still working.

 
Even though our shaft is now 53m deep vertically we are working on the tunnel at 35m. The grades have been around 25g per 7 ton load at a stamp mill.

 The mineralization is structurally controlled there is more gold the deeper one goes. Its just that at 35m there is no water, that is why for now we are working at that level.

At 35m we drove into the reef, sampled it and thought it was not rich enough and continued digging downwards. We had driven horizontally 3m. We then drove a further meter or so to build a sump basin as when we got into the reef water started flowing out. So the guys are digging vertically going down now. Reef at 35m was 3 meters from our shaft. The blast for our sump exposed the reef further and I decided to take it for fire assay.

The results were 143.2 grams per ton which was quite surprising considering when we had initially gotten into it, we thought it was useless.

We have since decided to continue with our downward push then we will drive into the reef again at 50m or so. Our confidence levels are now so high that we are literally shaking with excitement. we know the reef is there and we know chances are higher it will have good grades of gold.

We had expected to intercept the vein at 40m but the vertical shaft has not done so. It looks like we are now parallel to it as it is probably now vertically steeping.

The gold is in quartz veins, I would say in bands with sulphide and sometimes along the margins. There is a lot of pyrite in the quartz also. The quartz veins are hosted in very hard bluestone. We have breaking our drill steels and bits like every time.
 

and we had an interesting visitor.  we shepherded it away

6 minutes ago, Northeast said:

Mate, your kohunas must be made of solid steel  .  There is no way you would get me down there. 

Hope you find some good stuff but remember, it is only just gold.  Good luck and stay safe

What is a kohuna? To some people it is a matter of life and death getting down there. They would rather be down there than on the ground and watch their families starve. As you might have heard, my country is not exactly blessed with white collar jobs but it has vast unexploited resources.

I have personally gone down that shaft countless times using that 13mm steel rope and I weigh 123kg.

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I am attaching photos of the progress so far. We had intended to drive into the reef at 35m and then tunnel along it but the grades there were too low and we decided to continue sinking the shaft down. Water is coming out of the reef so we dug a sump at 35 m in the drive so we pump water from it while we sink downwards.

The shaft is now 38m deep. Our target is 55 to 66m as that is the depth where the guys in the area have been getting high-grade ore.

There is a lot of water but we are pumping it out well using a diaphragm pump.

So currently we are 38m down-shaft and progressing slowly.

And  got  to  visit  a  place  nearby  with  old  german  shafts.  The  guys  there  are  pumping  out water with the  hope  of mining  there

13.7m  now

Meanwhile on the other shaft the guys are now 10.5 meters deep. Progress is slow but I am hoping the pace will quicken this week as I now have 10 guys digging. The rock is changing from weathered granitoid to more competent granite and soon we should be in bluestone which is quite hard.

I am thinking of sinking 2 shafts now, maybe 30 to 35m deep then digging a tunnel to connect them. That way will I not intercept the reef? How feasible is that? The cost of digging the 2 shafts is very low here.

29 minutes ago, jasong said:

Fascinating, it's like watching a forum version of Gold Rush Africa, except with just good parts, the mining. Keep us all updated!

If you ever are looking for volunteers let me know. Especially if you need anyone to operate a detector, which I guess probably is not something needed if you have that much mudstone. But if I could get away from work for a trip long enough, I'd love to see all the mining in Africa firsthand, that stuff just isn't happening over here much anymore.

Haha in  Africa we havent even  started  exploiting  the  ground resources. Its  a pity our  laws  are bad  and  the  political  risk  is  too  high.  

Just to spread the risk I have decided to sink a shaft on the claim where people are already mining while I still decide on the way forward on my own land. The guys are now 4 meters deep and have now reached competed rock which we are now drilling using a jack hammer and explosives. We will give the owner of the property 25% of whatever we get. Its a sort of tribute arrangement.

We are sinking a vertical shaft targeting the known proven reef 40m below. In a month's time we should get there. This project is just to diversify the risk. It is actually less risky because it is on the brownfield where people are already mining. Most of the miners abandon their shafts because of water  at around 70m. We are hopping to go beyond these levels as we will be having the proper pumping systems that they are generally reluctant to invest in.

We will collar the shaft soon enough

Below are the pictures

4 hours ago, jasong said:

Have a map of faults in the area? Might be worth tracking if you find more out of place rocks.

There is a large plain near where I live which is flat right now but has sequences of much older rocks in the alluvium due to a huge block that was faulted down. At one time there were mountains, but they "fell" slowly, filling in the valleys and leaving a large flat plain after erosion leveled off the parts of the peaks which didn't sink completely underground. So, there are lots of out of place rocks there, and often they can indicate what lies underneath, or where "underneath" was 100 million years ago, which is now somewhere else.

Unfortunately there are no old maps for the area. What you are saying may be possible especially since the covering top layer (regolith) is 1.5m of mudstone. For all its worth we will open up the are where the rock came from and investigate further.

6 minutes ago, jasong said:

Interesting stuff, keep us updated.

Is it hilly? Hard to tell from the photo. The rock probably travelled downhill.

The  area  is  really  flat. Flat  for  miles. 

Sample  9's  origins  are  yet  to  be  established.  I suppose  there  is  no  harm in  further  opening  up  where  the rock  was  and  checking  whats  going  on.  How  does  such  a  rock  just  appear  from  nowhere?

Bedrock  is  schist.  We didnt  dig  much  into it though  we  know  from  the  other  shafts  (like  the  4m  one  below) its  a  few  meters  deep  before  one  encounters  more  competent  rock  in  the form  of  bluestone  and  granite  on  the  other side

We have  since  done  a  trenching  job  across  the  claim  and  the results  were  as  attached.  

The  trench  was  about  1.5m  deep  and  hit  bedrock.  Our  samples  though  were  mainly  soil  samples  taken  every  meter.

The  best  result  there  was  a  big  quartz  rock  which  unfortunately  did  not seem  like it  was  part  of  a  continuous  reef.  It  was  if  someone buried  there,  how and  why i  have  no  clue. It  had  a  bit  of  visible  gold.  

I am  not  sure  the results  are  good  enough 

I  picked  rubble  from the  ground  and  took  100g  sample  for  fire  assay.  The result was 26g/ton.  That  is  quite  encouraging.  

2 hours ago, bloodgold2 said:

I agree Steve, we have used magnetic maps as well but sometimes the shed if any can be some distance off the anomaly. Rios, if it was me I would be looking if your lease is in the main run on the magnetic maps of the others that are producing gold. Other than that all I can say is you only live once.

I hear. My plan now is to do a mag starting from where the other guys are mining running all the way to my claim. I think the level of confidence can increase a bit after that.

1 hour ago, idahogold said:

shear zones buddy ! and or highly altered structures........try and read the land..look for stuff thats different....cheers, ig

The  guys  arent  digging  in  my  claim,  they  are  50m  away  and  no even  on  that  line  i  am  targeting

They  are  50m  away  from  my  claim,  somewhere where  that  yellow  X in  the  pic  below.  I  am not  sure  how they  targeted  the particular spot.  Am  yet  to ask

North east  of  my  claim,  less  than  50m away,  these  guys  have  started  a  shaft.  They  are  now  8m  down.  1st  meter they  had  mudstone,  then  the  the  stones in the  order  of  the  pictures. They  havent  encountered  competent  rock  as  of  yet.  

Good  for  you  then, I reckon then that snow is better than rain. Except when it thaws.

2 hours ago, klunker said:

 Here in the Sierra Nevada mountains we will be fighting the snow for at least another two months but I am confident that the gold will still be there. Thanks for keeping us up dated on your operation.

So you  continue  mining or  you  take  a  break?  When  is  snowing,  in deep shafts  will it  be  cold  or  hot?

I will just have to be very patient in the project. Apparently when its raining the area is inaccessible unless one is prepared to walk 5km. On Sunday we thought the ground was dry enough and tried to go there only for our vehicles to sink. Lucky enough we had manpower to push them out and we went back home.  With  time  it  will  be worth  it  to  throw  rubble onto  the  muddy  areas

Very  true.  I  havent  completely  abandoned it.  Will get me  a gpx 7000 one  of these days. Its good  for  burning  fat

We  have had  some  serious  rains  this  year,  sweeping-bridges-type  of  rain so  lots  of ground  exposed  for  guys with  detectors

Awesome thanx.  Or  it  could  turn  out to be  just another  big  hole,  gold  as we  know  was  meant  to be  a scarce  commodity  hence its value.

I bought a 1000 square meter residential stand in Bulawayo sometime in 2015. The Civil Engineer who helped me clear the place of trees told me that the type of rocks on the property could be carrying gold bearing veins. I took pieces of the rocks for assay and the results were promising. (See picture below  for grades per tonne). Unfortunately one cannot mine on residential stands here.

Now it turns out there are old mine workings nearby and there is a mine  called Old Nickel also and it probably owns the mineral rights in the area.

It motivated me to take an interest in finding out more about gold as my country is basically rich with all sorts of minerals all over. Bulawayo is generally a gold bearing town, there is what is called the Bulawayan Greenstone belt. So it runs even under my house and I sleep on gold ore that I cannot touch and spend my days on a desk job.

It struck a cord of discontent in me that has brought me to the point of now being about to dig my 1st shaft 30 km from town where, with the necessary paperwork, one is allowed to mine. Initially I had bought a GPX 5000 which I ended up selling because I just did not have the time to walk around in the bush detecting, worse still neither did I have the patience.

Is there anyone out there who can interpret the result of a magnetic survey below? It terms of prospective gold mining.