Sandstone Quarries for Dummies

Quarrying processes

It's always a bit amusing, although also a bit infuriating, to see what sort of bushwa clueless freelancers visit on the internet when trying to answer questions on totally unfamiliar topics. You know, fashion bloggers trying to explain plumbing, plumbers trying to pass along fashion tips... that's why we're here: to ridicule people who do that solely for money; people like CareerTrend.com contributor Rebekah Smith and posts like "How Is Sandstone Mined?"

We'll give Smith credit where credit is due for inserting this line into an otherwise undistinguished post:

"Sandstone is mined through the quarrying process."

Rebekah would get more "props" if that hadn't been the last sentence before a scattergun list of factoids and bogosity that included such rubbish as,

"Sandstone is sedimentary rock composed of grains of sand that settles in one place, forms layers and combines with minerals. Sedimentary rock occurs from millions of years of sand settling on the bottoms of rivers, oceans and lakes. Each layer is pressed into the last until it turns to rock... The colors in the sandstone come from the minerals it mixed with while it was forming."

Ugh, especially that bit about, "Each layer is pressed into the last": what a load of horse puckey! Smith's assignment was to explain how mining (quarrying) works, but she was also required to write 300-500 words (the Demand Media minimum word count). She managed 350 words or so, but only by starting with the above 100-plus words and adding in another 100-plus words describing such useful quarrying steps as,

"Locate the area where sandstone is found... Create a safe mining plan... Obtain state, federal and local operating permits... Create a buffer zone to keep the mining noise away from neighbors... Build wildlife sanctuaries or habitats outside the mine to keep the wildlife safe."

Yeah, right: that's "how sandstone is mined"! Finally, the actual "instructions" – yes, Demand Media demanded that the post be written as a series of "actionable steps" – are just 98 words, including:

"Drill holes into the sandstone... You may be drilling down if the mine is new or down and sideways into the wall of the quarry if it is a pit... Set your vibration monitoring equipment. Drop the explosives into the holes you drilled. Blast all the explosives at once. This blast will remove the stones from the quarry wall. Move large pieces with a pit loader, and load them onto trucks that will haul the large pieces of sandstone to the processing center."

Not a word about planning and surveying, not a word about design. We won't insult the intelligence of the average mining engineer any farther, but if you want to know how a quarry actually works, google the phrase "quarry operations." You might find information written by someone with first-hand knowledge (or at least second-hand) instead of filler vomited up by a Dumbass of the Day.

copyright © 2019-2023 scmrak

DD - MINING