STUDY

OF
RESUING STOPING
 INDEX
 
 

 
1) INTRODUCTION

  2) BRIEF DESCRIPTION

  3) CONDITION OF APPLICATION

4) WORKING DESCRIPTION

5) CASE STUDY-I
 
6) CASE STUDY-II
 
7) CASE STUDY-III
 
1.    BIBLIOGRAPHY
 INTRODUCTION
 
“A New Approach to Mining Extremely Narrow Veins ’’
 
Resuing is also called “Stripping”.
 
Resuing is used for working very narrow veins or
paystreaks.Resuing is a method of working very narrow
vein of valuable ore and blasting of a sizabale quantity of a
barren wall rock in contact with the vein. It is used to mine
extremely narrow veins thinner than 0.8 m.
 BRIEF DESCRIPTION
It is a selective method of mining. In case of narrow veins no
other method is practicable economically that’s why the resuing
method is adopted.
In resuing, not only ore is mined out, but wall rock is cut as well
to make a minimum working space (about 0.9 m). The minedout ore
is moved out of stope by scraper through an ore-pass in the stope.
The rock cut from the walls is filled into the mined-out area and
serves as the working platform for the next cycle of stoping
operations.
In order for the working platform to reach the necessary height
for following operations, enough wall rock has to be blasted down.
In conventional resuing, the working width of the stope is
comprised of one-third ore body and two-thirds wall rock. Because
so much wall rock is mined, this mining method is labor-intensive
and of low productivity.
CONDITION OF APPLICATION

1. A well defined plane of weakness, as a clay seam or slip

 

on one side of valuable ore vein.

2. Steep dips are desirable.
 

 
3. High-grade ore is necessary for mining narrow deposits
 

with profit.
 
4. The vein is valuable enough to pay for unprofitable work
 

of blasting down a sizable portion of the barren wall.

 WORKING DESCRIPTION
Fig 1.1 showing the
general scheme of working. D is a
vein of high grade ore having barren
rock BC as the hang wall.

A flat back overhand stope of

minimum width is first started by the side
of a portion of the vein as shown at BC .
The barren rock of the barren wall is used
for filling as shown at F .

The valuable vein so

exposed is then blasted down and
allowed to fall through the chute
P , which are usually placed at
interval 5-15 meter.
 Alternative method
 Mine the vein from wall to wall, and sort out as
 

much waste as possible in the stope ; this produces

more and lower grade ore than resuing method.
 
 Carry a stope of minimum width, to include streak p;
 

this gives amounts and grades of ore Intermediate

between plan (a) and resuing.
 
 Soft ore may be picked out before to full stoping
 

width.
 Choice of method
     
Depends upon -:
     Amount of sorting possible in stopes.

   Costs of breaking ore and barren rock.

    Cost of handling ore.

      Cost of treatment of ore.

 
 CASE STUDY-I
 Cold springs Mine, Nederland

Basic mining characteristics:

 
       Ore Deposit : Tungsten ore(tungstate of iron,FeWO4)
 
       Shape of deposits: occurs as lenses in fissure veins
 
       Wall rock: chiefly Granite, frequently gneissoid
 
       Size of vein deposit:
      Average Width -: 8-10 in
  Average length -: 80 ft
 
 Average Dip of vein -: 70(steep)
     
 Development Work

Development work was started in the year 1926. Mine was

developed by 2-compartment shaft 40 ft in footwall and
inclined about 71 steep.
Upper three levels are 50 ft apart and
lower three levels are 3100 ft apart. No raises are driven in
advance of stoping ,but some timbered chutes and man
ways through old stope fills are maintained as openings
between levels. Cribbed chutes are 25-30 ft apart. Chutes at
the end of stopes have man ways alongside.
 
 Stope Working
Stope is advanced by successive cuts 4-6 ft high.
Method of breaking ground varies with character of vein.
Where ore occurs as a single band, resuing or “stripping” is
used. Waste is blasted first, usually on the hanging wall
side, and leveled off by hand. A sheet-iron plat is then laid
on the fill and exposed ore is carefully blasted down with
small charge of explosive, or taken down by hand moiling.
Where ore and waste are too intimately associated for
resuing, they are blasted down together and sorted by
hand. Amount of waste thus obtained is more than enough
for filling; this excess waste is than shoveled into chutes and
hoisted to surface. In the 8th month of 1931,an average of
0.445 ton of was recovered per man-shift of all labour.
Explosive: 4.48 lb(pounds) of 40% dynamite were
consumed per ton recovered.
 Case Study-II 

Molybdenum corp. of America mine

Basic mining characteristics:
 
 Ore Deposit: Molybdenite(MoS2)
     

 
 Shape of deposits:
     

     Vein carrying molybdenite occur in zone of branching

and interfingering fractures in porphyry.
 
 Size of vein deposit:
     

 Average Width -: 12-18 in

Average length -: 200-500 ft
 
 
 Average Dip of vein: - 60(steep)
     
 Geological Description
Width of mineralisation varies from fraction of inch to 6
ft, but vein wall are sometime 10 ft apart. Streaks of high
grade ore not over 6 in wide are commonly mined, but for
whole mine average width of material taken as ore is
probably 12-18 in.
Veins are commonly 200-500 ft long, extending down dip
about one-third their horizontal length.
Average dip is 60 , but wide local variation occur.
Both vein and wall rock drill and breaks easily.
Molybdenite is very friable and must be blasted carefully to
avoid loss in fine.
 Development Working:
Mine is developed by several tunnels at various
elevations. Level interval is 40-100 ft. no raises are driven for stopping only.

Stope working :
Stopes are started by taking cut from back of drift, placing drift sets, an
building chute pockets 50 ft apart. Manways are carried alongside of
alternate chutes.
Chutes and manways are of round cribbing or stulls laced with split
lagging. Chutes are 3 ft sqare inside. Grizzels are not used. Stopes are flat-
back. Ground is broken by uppers, rarely over 3 ft deep.
Method of breaking ore varies accordingly to ore occurrence and
is carefully supervised. Resuing is used where possible, waste portion of vein
being mined before ore is broken down by picking or very light blasting.
Plank flooring is sometime laid on fill before breaking down ore, but usually
fill is simply leveled off. Ore is shoveled directly to chutes without use of
wheelbarrows, in spite of wide chute spacing. Double handling of ore is
necessary in any case because of sorting. Enough material for filing is
generally provided by waste necessarily broken and sorted out in stoping.
Drilling: Both machine and hand drilling are employed. Hand drilling is favored in case
of soft and loose ground because recovery of ore is cleaner and more complete.
Hand rotated stoppers are used for harder ground.
 

Explosive: Gelatin (40%) dynamite is used.

 Case study-III

Zhuanshanzi Gold Mine

 
Location of mine :The Zhuanshanzi gold mine is located to
the north of Cifeng City, Inner Mongolia. As early as 1882,
mining activities were recorded. A commercial-scale mine was
initially set up in 1958 and rebuilt in 1965. An expansion was
undertaken in 1979.
 
Geological Description: The orebody is a gold-bearing
quartz vein and sulphide altered zone. and is 0.4-0.7 m wide.
The main country rock is intermediate diorite with some
crystallized limestone. Both hanging wall and foot wall are fairly
stable and the broken ore does not readily oxidize or form a
conglomerate.
Dip of orebody -: 62°-75°
Average grade of ore -: 15.33 g/mt.
Development Work:
Currently, the mine consists of three production sections
Yangppo, Beidajin, and No. 27 Orebody. Yangpo and No. 27 are
developed through a footwall vertical shaft with a level height of 40
m. For Beidajin, a development system of an inclined footwall. shaft
with a level height of 30 m is applied. The three sections are
distributed in a triangle in plane with a distance of 440-680 m
between each. The three sections are connected by underground
drifts.
The resuing method had been used in this mine for many years.
In this system, the orebodies are divided into mining blocks of 4050
m in length alongstrike, with a 3-4m sill pillar and a 2-4m crown
pillar remaining. On one side of the block an exploratory raise is
mined, which is also used for ventilation and access. On the other
side, another raise is carried as the block is mined upward.
 
 Stope Working
Stope is arranged alongstrike and is between levels 3 and 4. The
stope is 43.5-m long and 40-m high with a net height of 37 m not
including the transport drift. The mean dip of the orebody is 70 with
an average width of 0.43 mIn order to reduce ore loss, a pillarless
development and opened method was undertaken. A stoping raise is
mined from level 4 to level 3 on one side of the stope. Another raise
is driven along with the advance of the stoping operation.
The opening operation is started from the top of the in-thevein
transport drift at level 4. After top shooting, an artificial sill pillar of
reinforced concrete is built up on top of the transport drift, i.e., the
bottom of stope. For mucking out the waste in the stope, a steel pass
that is 0.7 m dia. is set up in the middle of stope and extended as the
mining operation proceeds upward. Fourteen steel mill-hole sections
0.8 m long and 0.6 m wide are fixed in the concrete pillar at an
interval of 3 m. A scraper winch is equipped for mucking the cut-
down wall rock into the steel pass. Ladders, pipelines, and cables are
installed in the two raises.
Contd….
…..Contd.
The stope is divided into two sections for orebody stoping
and wall-rock cutting, each of which is 21-22 m long. Designed
stoping thickness for ore is 0.6 m with a grade of 8.25 g/mt. Due to
the narrow vein, two cuts of slot stoping and one wall-rock cut are
performed during one cycle in each section. After the first stoping
slot, the second operation has to be done in a width of 0.6 m. So,
all blast holes for wall rock cutting must be drilled before the first
operation of slot stoping. The hole spacing is I m.

Two methods of cutting the stope slot may be used. One

method is to utilize the raise as a free face, and the other is to blast
making use of the fractures as a free face. In the test, the slot cut
was 0.6 m wide, and the blast holes were 0.6 m deep, drilled in a
staggered pattern. Normally, the holes should follow the inclination
of the orebody, while being subject to slight change depending on
different drilling equipment used. Actual advance of each cycle of
slot-cut stoping was about 0.5 m.
Drilling : Drilling was done using Chinese-made stopers.

Blasting : After every two blasts, the broken pile was leveled
off. This is to prevent the broken rock from mixing into the broken
ore. To facilitate mucking the wall rock out of the stope, the ore pile
is graded into a slope of So dipping from the two sides to the center,
and the surface must be covered with rubber belting as well. The
broken waste is brought out of the stope by means of scraper via
the steel ore-pass.
 
Explosive : ANFO was used for blasting. Normal blasting fuse,
detonating cord, and nonelectric delay detonator gave good results
in the blasting operation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) Mining engineers handbook; PEELE
  

2) Elements of mining technology vol.2; D.J.desmukh

  

3) The Journal of The South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.