DIAMOND DRILLS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2714, 30 November 1881, Page 2

DIAMOND DRILLS.

There are now five diamond drills at work in Victoria, and at the end o£ last month there were 50 unsatisfied applications for their use hooked by the Mines Department. Pour of these are surface drills, and were imported from Philadelphia at a cost of £5677. The fifth is an underground drill, and cost £BIB. The Victorian Government are now getting five of these drills made in the colony. The cost per foot of boring varies according to the strata pierced. At Stawell, through hard metamorphic rock with quartz veins, it averages about 12s per foot; at Kingston, through basalt and underlying drift, about 8s 6d ; and at Kilcunda, through mosozoic rock (sandstones and shales), the cost does not exceed 7s 6d per foot. The total number of feet bored up to the 24th ultimo is over 22,000 ft. A drill worked by two shifts of men (three men in a shift) has bored in basaltic country as much as 205 ft in a week, and it frequently happens that the work done exceeds 140 ft per week. Bores sunk by hand in the Kingston district have cost from £1 to £25 per foot, according to depth and hardness of rock. The New Zealand Parliament last session voted £3OOO to assist local bodies and associations to procure diamond drills, and it is understood that the Mangahua County Council and the Tuapeka Prospecting Association have respectively been promised half that sum to assist in purchasing these machines.