Waterjettting 19b - California gold mining

While mankind has directed the flow of water against earth and rock faces for millennia, as a way of eroding and removing material, it was not until the days of the Gold Rush in California around 1850 that the idea of confining the water into a hose, and through a nozzle crystallized.

Gold was originally found in the gravel in 1848, when James Marshall was helping John Sutter build a sawmill on the banks of the South Fork of the American River, in what is now Coloma, CA.

Figure 1. Sutter’s Mill on the American River (Replica by California Parks ).

The news that gold had been found in the tailrace led into what has been referred to as the greatest mass movement of people in the Western Hemisphere, as people flocked to California over the next few years, during the period of the California Gold Rush.

Figure 2. Location of Coloma, CA (red circle) relative to Sacramento and San Francisco – Lake Tahoe is by the 395 sign in the upper right. (Google Earth)

As the prospectors panned the gold from the stream beds, so they moved north east along the valleys and rivers, seeking the sources of the gold particles that millennia had washed down from the Sierra Nevada. One such source was found at American Hill, just north east of Grass Valley. Here the gold was found in beds of a weak sandstone, lying relatively close to the surface.

Figure 3. The American Hill Diggings, with plaque. The original height of the hill can be seen in the background.

The gold settled to the bottom of the sandstone, and so the miners would tunnel into the side of the hill, seeking to find the richest layer. Unfortunately as you dig out the bottom of a hillside, the overlying rock has a habit of falling down, with mildly fatal results to those caught in its path. This made mining somewhat dangerous, given the soft nature of the rock as Edward E. Matthison found when he was nearly buried when he was working the property. So with partners, he decided that a more remote method of digging out the gold was needed. So, with the help of a local blacksmith named Miller, he fashioned a nozzle on the end of a canvas hose he ran from a water reservoir at the top of the cliff (initially a nail keg) and used the resulting stream to wash the ore (and overlying rock) into a channel that was later turned into a flume, with a series of strips to catch the gold.

Figure 4. Early hydraulic mining

The method had many advantages since, in the process of washing the rock from the solid it was broken down into individual particles. This separated the gold, sand and clay particles, so that while the gold particles would be trapped in the flume, the lighter sand and clay particles would be carried further downstream with the water. By 1853 they were paying a water bill of $153 a week (with water at $0.75 per miners inch this meant they were using 2,000 gal/min) but making the four partners a profit of $50 a day. Larger and larger monitors (the name given to the nozzle and pivoting assembly) were built, throwing water at greater distances, and mining at much faster rates.

Figure 5. Monitors at work at the North Bloomfield mine.

This, in turn, required increasing amounts of water, and this was carried in flumes down through the Sierra Nevada, with agreements being made between companies for distribution, collection and the passing on of water. The nozzle diameters of some of the larger monitors grew to more than 8 inches, and they were capable of mining tens of feet from the operator.

Figure 6. Later design of monitor. The wooden beam usually had a box holding rock on the other end in order to balance the weight of the nozzle section.

The nozzles were made longer, as they were made larger, in order to get the jet to throw to greater distances, but this made steering and control of the jets more difficult. The gooseneck swivel was invented in 1855 to help swivel the nozzle, and a monitor operator noted that when he stuck his shovel into the stream of water it deflected the nozzle. This was Dave Stokes at the Malakoff mine and led to the invention by his Supervisor, Henry Perkins, of the rotating system for sprinklers that is still used to this day.

Figure 7. Modern rotating sprinkler showing the deflection plate. (Aliexpress )

The largest mine in the region was the Malakoff, and in the region around it there were some 425 companies operating and, between 1871 and 1880 they produced $121 worth of gold (at the price of the day).

But there was costs to this operation outside of just the mining ones. For while the gold was captured in the flumes, the sand, and more particularly the clay, was carried in the water until it became less turbulent. And that was when it reached the Yuma, American and Beam rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada and down towards Sacramento. As the water slowed, so the clay precipitated out, and the river beds filled with sediment. Thus, when the rains came, the water overflowed its banks, flooding the neighboring fields.

Foregoing the fact that it was the mining that had brought the farmers and many others to the region, the floods were not acceptable, and following the floods of 1880 there was an increasing effort to contain the mining sediments. This led to the court ruling by Judge Sawyer in 1886 restricting the practice of hydraulic mining, and the technology fell into abeyance. It was restarted at the time of both World Wars, but in recent times there was only one small mine that had been “grandfathered” still in production. Its role in developing California is not greatly recognized at present, and the remaining legacy is more seen in the vertical bluffs and large flat areas of mined sand that are left north of Grass Valley, together with the old wooden water flumes that still thread their way around the edges of the valleys.

Figure 8. View of the Malakoff Diggings

I’ll talk more about the spread of the technology next time.

Deepwater Oil Spill and San Jose Mine concerns

There has not been much apparently said about the fishing for pipe within the blowout preventer (BOP) at the Deepwater well today. The project seemed to come to a studious pause with the discovery of a considerable volume of hydrates around the shear valves in the Deepwater BOP, as opposed to the lesser quantities of hydrates in the 3-ram stack that was placed on top of the well, as part of the shut-in procedure.

The interlocking crystals appear to be filling the empty spaces just above the rams in the BOP, and holding the pipes in that space with sufficient tenacity to make them difficult to remove. If that is indeed the case, and the crystal growth extends down through the BOP and into the spaces at the top of the well then it poses a potentially significant problem to the extraction of the drill pipe, and the removal of the existing BOP. The current BOP needs to be replaced so that a functional BOP can be placed in its stead, and the well can be conventionally plugged and sealed and then abandoned.

However, if the hydrates have extended down through the mechanism and space of the BOP, then, as with the upper set of rams, the moving parts of the BOP may no longer be functional, meaning that the drill pipe cannot be released. This then raises a further complication, since if the drill pipe continues to extend below the BOP (and it is believed to extend some 3,000 ft) it too may be held within a hydrate plug that fills the space between it and the steel and cement rings that form the upper lining of the well. I will probably explain how we use that principle in bolts that hold the mine roof up around the world that are often called full-column resin anchors, in a Sunday tech talk fairly soon, but the net result is that the BOP and drill pipe may be locked in place.

This makes the next step in the process somewhat difficult to predict, since the intent in removing the BOP was both to allow the well to be plugged, but also to provide a backup protection for the top of the well, at the time that the relief well drilled into the lower part of the well, and where the changing pressure condition at the bottom of the well might cause the seals at the top of the well to rupture and, with inadequate protection at the bottom of the well potentially allow the well to start leaking again.

While this consequence is somewhat unlikely, it depends on the condition in pieces of the well that are not available for inspection. Hydrates above the shear ram suggests that it is likely that they extend below the rams, but there is no way of knowing without clearing the passage. And the extent, or even the possibility of the drill pipe being held within a plug of hydrates is not that much different to it being held in a cement collar that adhered as the cement was pumped to the bottom of the well.

The hydrates above the ram could be removed (either with the high-pressure jetting or chemical/thermal soaking) but it may be more difficult to get through the BOP to release the underlying catch holding it within the sea-floor mount, and to release the drill pipe, or even to section the drill pipe to release the assembly. And just before midnight (as I did a last check after writing this post) they started flushing the BOP with some fluid.


Moving down to Chile, the machine that will be used to drill the relief well is a variant on a raise drilling machine, that is used more commonly for boring holes upwards from the underground space, rather than reaming them down. It is a Strata 950, made by Murray and Roberts through RUC Cementation. The unit, was, apparently, only built last year.

RUC Cementation has established the capability to design and manufacture specialist large diameter raise borers in its Kalgoorlie workshop. During the year (2009), three Strata 950 raise borers (the most powerful underground raise drill rig in the world) were completed, one for its own use and the other two for group operations in South Africa, Canada and Chile.

Raise borers normally work by drilling a small hole (13-inch diameter) down from the surface to an existing underground space. Then a reaming head is attached to the drill steel at the bottom of the hole, and the head rotated and pulled back up the hole, allowing the debris to fall into the larger hole below it. It is a relatively fast and effective method of creating shafts, and is increasingly used at the surface and in underground mining.

Normal use of a raise borer .

In some cases, such as the present one in Chile, it is not possible to get the larger reaming head down to the bottom of the shaft. In that case, once the initial central bore has been completed, then a second reaming head is mounted and will drill down along the same line, with the debris still falling down the central hole, and being disposed of underground.
This alternate way of drilling is not as fast, since the operation has to be careful not to block the borehole with the cuttings from the reamer, and it is a little more difficult to keep going straight. The following two pictures are of a competing model but serve to illustrate the principle of the Down Reaming process:


In contrast to up-reaming the drill shaft is in compression which might help on longer bores. One of the drilling requirements is to watch the torque that develops in the drill rods, since this can build-up to sufficient levels that, if suddenly released (as in drilling broken rock) it can whip the head around sufficiently fast as to break the string.

The actual teeth on the bit are specially designed for the rock that the bit will be expected to penetrate, but they are conventionally bit or button teeth, similar in shape to those used in the smaller cones of a conventional oilwell bit.

Reaming head being loaded into place.

The drill will operate from a concrete pad, which is, I gather, now poured, but must set before operations can commence tomorrow, and the hole is not planned to be lined, which may also cause problems, since there is no easy way to deal with rock that falls behind the head. However this particular one is called “David” so let us hope it can meet all challenges.

The Strata 950.

I do have a couple of other concerns. One is that the miners were apparently getting water from an underground stream, and one worries as to whether this water leaves the mine though an existing natural channel, or if it has been flowing to the bottom of the mine, where it might have been earlier collected and pumped out. If the sump pump no longer has power, this could imply that the mine is slowly flooding. And in that regard, the decision not to send power down into the mine, means that they could not send down and power small pumps that the miners could then use to keep their current location dry.