Timbering and Mining: A Treatise on Practical American Methods

vii, 279, 125 text figs. . HB. 8vo orig. cloth, wear to foot of spine. Good ex-lib: Withdrawn from the Herbert Lister Bowman Library, Department of Geology, University Museum, Oxford. 1st edition, 6th impression. A practical handbook of early twentieth-century mining engineering, providing a detailed contemporary account of American methods of underground working, mine timbering and ore extraction. Storms discusses the selection and preservation of mine timbers, drifting and drift sets, working through running and swelling ground, the use of structural steel underground, shaft sinking and timbering, bucket dumping, shaft stations, drainage, stoping methods, square-set timbering, and the construction and design of head-frames. Of particular interest are the numerous descriptions of actual mining practice. These include the California Mother Lode, the Comstock Lode, the Homestake Mine in South Dakota, the Broken Hill mines in New South Wales, the Kimberley diamond mines of South Africa, and individual workings in California, Montana, Michigan, Mexico and elsewhere. Considerable attention is given to Philip Deidesheimer's square-set system, developed on the Comstock, together with its subsequent modification in Californian mines, as well as methods devised to reduce the increasingly expensive use of timber. …