Going opal mining Guy?
yeah I have to ask, what are pounding that requires you abandoning that hammer for long stretches?
It's a long story. Condensed version: There's a lovely spot in the bush near Sydney with 3 generations of family history. Has a great swimming hole, that always (since at least 1900) had a large fine white sandy beach on one side. This is due to the way flood current flows - it goes down one side, hits a barrier, curves around and spreads out, dropping carried sand on the beach. Floods get about six to eight feet deep. Back around 2002 the area had a severe bushfire; surrounding hills up the entire valley were left with bare ground. Then in the next few years there were some severe floods - high rainfall plus the rapid runnoff. Result: three huge rocks washed down the river and wedged, just upstream from the swimming hole. In subsequent floods the result is the pool's current swirl is absent, replaced by a sharp jet that cuts across the back of the beach and is working on cutting a channel through the downstream barrier that forms the pool. The beach is already mostly gone, and each flood cuts more away, including from the bank.
So, I'm removing the wedged boulders. Once they are gone the flow will be as before, and the beach will gradually rebuild, though it may take a long time. Decades? 100+years? Doesn't matter.
The largest boulder is the size of a big car. I wish I'd seen that flood, it must have been pretty spectacular.
Yesterday was my third rockbreaking trip there, the small and medium boulders are now gone, and I've started on the big one. Mostly working with rock-splitting wedges and small mallets, but that 14 lb sledge really makes a difference for stubborn bits.
I call it Molly. Like Thor's hammer Molnir, but the Aussie version. "Oh, you don't want to break? Have a little chat with Molly. She's very persuasive."
Please, no 'helpful' suggestions about explosives, jack hammers, crackamite, or anything else that can't be used in this location for multiple reasons, including legal and logistical. I've already been through all that on another forum. If I had a way to manually drill deep holes in the big rock at any decent speed, yes, crackamite or 'feathers and wedges', would save some time. But everything has to be carried in, and it's over an hour's walk, some off-track. First trip my pack was 30Kg, yesterday with the sledge and some other stuff it was 26Kg. And even with present methods around half the work is carting the rubble away and tidying up. The aim is to leave the site pristine, as if the recent boulders were never there.
I'm doing a time-lapse photo-series. After the rock-moving work is finished I'll post it.
Couple of pics below are the final stages with the medium-sized rock. It was already much smaller than its original size. Gives a good idea of the amount of work in cleanup too. All that rubble is now moved, though only to a temporary intermediate location. First priority was to get it out of the flood stream-path, otherwise it could get washed into the pool in a flood.
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