It's a little cold out here.
Alright, so give me a sense of what
we've got going on here.
Well, first of all, it's a little
cold.
The temperature has dropped.
But what we have going on here
is the drilling process
has just started.
So you can see the drill rig back
there. It's actually
kind of like a small semi-trailer.
And you see that orange rod that's
sticking up?
That's the angle of the drill hole
that's going down into
the ground. And what's been
completed to date over the
last couple days.
Is they've drilled through about 100
feet of overburden and
they've set the steel casing
down in the bedrock.
And so the drill crew is
getting ready to start coring
the bed rock, okay, and that's a
hollow barrel with a
diamond-impregnated tip on it,
and it just cuts out a cylinder of
the rock going down.
This particular hole will go down
about 1,500 feet.
In order to drill that we have
to manage the rock cuttings
that come up out of the hole.
And so they're excavating a hole
there which is called a sump,
okay, that the drill cuttings
will go into and
that sump will be lined with
that black plastic
liner there. And this is all
according to the administrative
code here in the state
of Wisconsin how the DNR regulates
this process.
The sump holds
the cutting so any
other issue that just stays right
there and then eventually that will
just get sealed up.
Yeah, so the drill cuttings
will go into the sump.
They'll go in as a slurry.
So there'll be some water and
some bentonite mixed in there.
Once the hole is done,
the cuttings and the bentonites will
settle out.
That water will be decanted
into an adjacent hole so it
can just percolate into the ground.
Those drill cutting and the
betonite will be
mixed with Portland cement to
solidify it.
And then it will be covered with
that plastic liner and
then the whole area will be buried
and reclaimed.
So how do you feel about the
progress that's been made so
far?
Well it's been a little slow because
last week it was warm and we
had some rain up here so that
makes it, you got to take a
little more care just to get things
set up so that's delayed things
a little bit but it's very
cold now which is actually good
conditions for doing the drilling
and so once we
get that sump constructed
they'll be able to start making
some pretty good progress on the
holes.
What is your geology,
your geologist, or what is their
title?
The field geologist.
Yes.
So what have they here for?
So they're here, so we've
got two geologists out here,
and they work in tandem.
We've got drill crews that are
working 24 hours a day on
shifts, and so those field
geologists are out here
overseeing the work of
the drilling contractor, making
sure they're doing everything in
accordance with the environmental
permits that the project's
been issued.
And then they're also tasked with
when the Exploration Corps comes
out. They're taking that back
to the core processing facility
where they log the geology,
process the core, cut
it up into segments, send it off
to a lab where the lab tests
it for things like copper and
gold and taurine.
And the metal pipes over there, is
that the casing?
So that is the drill rod.
OK. So that's the drill ride.
So this hole will be about 1,500
feet deep. So we need a lot of drill
rod to go down it and get that.
Yeah.
Alright, I think that about
covers what we're maybe
know from the background, so
I think we'll let Ethan just start
getting videos of some of the action
going on, and then when he's
done out here, then I think if you
can take us inside the rig, we'll
take a look in there.