A Day in the Life… of core

We have 2 drills at Blende. Only one works. That’s a long story. But the short story is, we have one drill that works around the clock, with 2 shifts of drillers. So at the end of each shift we end up with a whole pile of new core all lined up in boxes. This is where the geologists get all excited when they see sparkly minerals in the core.

The first thing that happens is that the core has to be ‘geoteched’. What this means is, they convert all the measured intervals from feet to meters, as well as taking lots of other important measurements from the core. Karla was our lovely geotecher until she left to go learn about Calculus. We all miss her terribly, especially Powder. We now have Glen and he’s doing a fine job.



The next step is that I get a hold of it, and describe the crap out of it. I create what is called a core log, which is a long description of the entire drill hole, the rock types, and the mineralization (if any) in it. The next step is that I mark out any of the samples that we want for assay, to determine how much of each kind of metal is in the core. Usually we sample a good portion of the entire drill holes. This means that I get to draw all over the core with china markers – its’ the easiest part of my job. Then our lovely geotecher will assign each sample a sample number and then – it’s out of our hands! Actually, we have to move the darn stuff and stack it so there’s still a bit left to do. The boxes are actually quite heavy – quite hard to lift on your own. I’m going to have some good biceps after all this!

Now the core is put through some punishing treatments. First of all, the core must be split. Only half of the core will go for assay so it is split in one of two ways. Either it is sawed, which is slow but clean. OR it is split the old fashioned way:

This is Nick. Nick likes to break rocks. Really. Even when it's snowing. It’s hard work and one person can do about 10 boxes of core in a day. That means that a typical 30-40 box drill hole takes a few days to split.

In our camp the samples are then crushed into a fine powder so that we reduce the amount it costs to ship these samples for assay. The crushing lab is a big metal box that the lab guys work in. It’s dusty work and they end up being shaken up the entire day while the crusher is going. On a good day they can get through about 50 boxes worth of core in a day.

This is Brett. Brett works really hard and still finds the time to climb mountains in the evening. What he ends up with after all this is a wee little bag:

Then we say goodbye to the samples and the rest of the split core is stacked here to remain over the winter.

Yesterday I finished logging the LAST drill hole. Very soon the whole camp will be moving out (demobilizing). I have my ticket though – I will be home late on Friday. 2 more sleeps! Next time - I'll show you what REALLY keeps this camp running. The cooks! See you all soon,

Mel