Bighole stoping

Bighole stoping is an up-scaled variant of sublevel open stoping, using longer,

larger-diameter DTH blastholes, rang- ing from 140 to 165 mm. Blast patterns are
similar to SLOS, but with holes up to 100 m-long. A pattern with 140 mm
blastholes will break a rock slice 4 m- thick, with 6 m toe spacing. DTH drill- ing
is more accurate than tophammer drilling, allowing the vertical spacing between
sublevels to be extended, from 40 m with SLOS mining, to 60 m with bighole
stoping. However, the risk of damage to the rock structures has to be taken into
account by the mine plan- ners, as the larger holes contain more explosives.