Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Looking for gold...

It’s no surprise to see a diamond-drilling rig at work in a mining town. This one is set up behind our office, about ten metres away from the hiking trail. This diamond-drill is searching for gold. It’s called a diamond drill because it uses a diamond studded drill bit that drills a hollow tube about two inches wide and a mile deep, into the rock. The driller then hauls the drill tubes up, twenty feet at a time, containing core samples that tell where the gold is hidden.
The drill cores are stored flat in these wooden boxes which will be shipped off the lab where they'll be studied to see how much gold there is down the hole.

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